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Galileo started following Dumping tanks uphill and Winter heating with a small electric heater
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Winter heating with a small electric heater
Galileo replied to Carl Hansen's topic in General Discussion
We’re wrapping up a 7 month camping trip that included some higher elevations and temps down to high teens in NM, Utah, Nevada. We used a plain old “milk house heater” that Ace or pretty much any hardware store carries. It says it’s 1500 watts. I haven’t tracked down the major air leak at the rear curbside of our LE2 - that’s a project for December. But suffice it to say that with the amount of cold air that blows in the furnace outlets - the “leak” is serious. In cold weather and trying to keep the thermostat at 68 - we’ve gone through a 20# tank of propane in just two or three days - so electric heat is a huge savings as we rarely boondock. Im actually going to be looking for an electric furnace or duct heater to have a more elegant option than the space heater. I’m also looking into adding one or more electric point if use water heaters - as the having the propane water heater located 15 feet from the bathroom sink is an epic engineering fail. -
We do pretty much the same as you JD - except we always dump before departure - unless the campground has no dump station or sewer connections. I’ve found as you have that without a good degree of rearward tilt on the Ollie, that tanks drain slowly if at all. I generally can get away with just using the front jack and a jack block to lift the nose a bit. I can usually spot a bit if an incline at the dump station and take advantage of it. Often having to pull in “the wrong way” to capitalize on the grade of the dump station. I haven’t found a huge need to elevate the curb side to get the grey tank to empty. Unless the dump station pavement is really terribly pitched.
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I would get a hammer and beat that extension cord FLAT..... then I would cut it up in little pieces, braid it into a noose and hang it in full view of the other extension cords as an example of what will happen if they pull the same sh%t.
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Our original manual black tank dump valve was angled outward as noted above. Seems like the others who reworked their cables got some improvement, but still not optimal. Probably why OTT service said the “fix” was going electric. We’re about 6 weeks short of wrapping up our 2026 camping season (from January to beginning of August) - so that’s 2 seasons of using the electric valve. Has been performing without a hitch being operated every 3 to 7 days. So I’m quite happy with the upgrade. Just to clarify - out issue with the original 12 foot cable with two 90 degree bends was that the force required to open the valve was high and getting worse with every use. The force to close the valve was always very low. So simple “binding” or lack of lubrication was never the likely cause. I’m still convinced that wear of the steel core against the plastic sheath at the inner radius of one or both 90 degree bends was the culprit. Having had to replace throttle and transmission shift cables on a ‘92 Catalina 30 yacht with a similar L-O-N-G cable run with tight bends convinced me of this kind of wear and the resulting forces required.
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Everything else is working as it should. We’ll have to wait until we get home to check further. Fortunately for us after 11 years of ownership we know how long we can go between dumps and fills. Battery monitoring can be done manually until we get this figured out.
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"Track "IT" down! Yesterday I towed Twist home to prepare it for an upcoming trip. As per usual - I plugged the 30 amp shore power cord into a 15 amp extension cord which (in turn) was plugged into a GFI outlet on the side of the house. All was working as it should until about 4 hours later it was time to plug in a vacuum cleaner in order to start cleaning the floor of the camper - yep, the vacuum didn't work! All other things were still working (or so I thought) but plugging and unplugging and checking the GFI - both inside and outside the camper yielded no joy. OK - time to check fuses - OK time to take apart the circuit breaker panel - OK, time to check the house circuit breaker panel - OK, time to take a break and actually think about what is going on. Finally (I can be a bit slow sometimes but this was really starting to p... me off), it was time to start getting serious. So, starting have already noted that 12 volt things still worked AND with the inverter on the 110 volt interior items worked, I felt that the "problem" was isolated to the 110 volt shore power. But, in my mind I had already checked that and there was no problem with fuses, circuit breakers or connections. BUT - lets actually TEST these things to make sure that they are actually live at each connection point. Sure enough, the extension cord was bad. No sign of melting, burning, corrosion, loose connection, or anything. Also, no one had tripped over it nor disturbed it in any way since I had first had things working. Eventually (probably during some dark cool rainy winter day I'll get that extension cord back out and see what the problem is. But, for now, the problem was fixed by simply getting another cord and getting back to work. Bill
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This. We had this problem with multiple control panel switches. Solved it by blowing canned air into the switch while exercising it and placing a shop vac hose directly over the switch after exercising it. Also vacuumed out the back side of the control panel. Had to do this a couple of times during the first year of ownership. Been fine ever since.
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All windows leaking except exit window when washing.
Galileo replied to 2008RN's topic in General Discussion
I don’t know if this is a revelation or if somebody else has figured this out - or if I’m completely wrong - but - Unless the drain holes - inner and outer - are blocked so badly that the window tracks overflow entirely - there’s no reason why water would leak inside the trailer. From what I could see there was only a tiny bit of water in the bottom of the tracks that was visible through the holes in the plastic track guide. However - there’s IS a stop/bumper at the forward travel of the lower window track. It’s a rubber “foot” like you might see on the bottom of an appliance to keep it from scratching a countertop. On my leaky window - this screw was quite loose. I noticed when I removed it to try to clean out the track. The stop (hole in the frame) does happen to be right above where the water is leaking into the trailer. The leak is between the window frame and the inner wall of the trailer. As I say - I might be smoking something, but I’m thinking this is the only(?) place where there is a hole low enough in the track to leak water inside the trailer unless the track is filled with water. I plan to dry out the track, make sure that hole is clean, then reinstall the number and screw with some sealant in the threads. Update to follow. added: Looking at the frame and inner plastic track/guide - I can’t tell if the hole for the screw actually goes through the frame. I figured that for the stop/bumper to have any strength, it would have to. And the screw looks long enough. There’s also a coloration difference at the tip of the screw that indicates it was into the aluminum frame. Either way, drilling a hole through the bottom of the frame is a pretty dumb way to add a window stop. -
SeeLevel Tank Monitor Issue
Tom and Doreen replied to marsharini's topic in Mechanical & Technical Tips
Is there power to the unit? Does your water pump switch / indicator work? I would check everywhere a service person may have worked to see if there are any pinched, broken, or unplugged wires. Are any other devices not working, check fuses, etc.. -
12Volt issue inside trailer
marsharini replied to Buddhabelly's topic in Mechanical & Technical Tips
This thread was very helpful to us. We’re in a National Forest campground and powered up the inverter and there was no power to all the outlets except the microwave so that’s where I had to plug in my cpap. Did a search on the forum this morning and voila - problem solved. It was the gfi. Thanks to all who contribute to the Oliver knowledge base. -
Our tank monitor is not giving any readings, including battery level. Just wondering if this has happened to anyone else. Some background info, we were in for service at the end of April and the tanks read prior to the service. One service issue was a replacement water heater and I’m wondering if something got knocked loose somewhere between hulls. Unfortunately for us our pickup from Service was on a Friday close to closing time and they couldn’t get out fast enough so we didn’t find the problem until later in the day. We were able to stop in on Monday afternoon and one of the service techs took a look at it and even tried a new monitor panel, but no success. The tech did mention a possible pulled wire somewhere but they didn’t have the time in their schedule that day to find a fix. If there’s an easy fix/solution we’d like to try that before we haul it down to Hohenwald.
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All windows leaking except exit window when washing.
2008RN replied to 2008RN's topic in General Discussion
I don't know if it is going to help but I use a Dremel bit and increase the Drain slot height from about 3/32 to a little over 1/8' on both the inside and outside drain slots. I also put gutter "J" tracks over the windows, mostly to help the street side windows. We did have a couple days of rain in Yosemite in April, and no leaks. They weren't flooding rains though. There are other threads about window leaking, I also cleaned all tracks throughly inside and out. Good luck. -
Wow, that's a 100A breaker! It must power the entire 12VDC panel and your jacks. You have to think, how did it blow? Unless a major appliance fried or you did something notable, like arc a heavy gauge hot wire to ground, something you'd remember, the 100A OPTIFUSE just tripped for no reason. There have been several defective OPTIFUSE breakers noted on our forum. I also read OTT has stopped using them. I suggest you replace this breaker with a 100A ANL fuse. 😎
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12Volt issue inside trailer
Buddhabelly replied to Buddhabelly's topic in Mechanical & Technical Tips
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Thanks; will check.
- Yesterday
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All windows leaking except exit window when washing.
Steph and Dud B replied to 2008RN's topic in General Discussion
Yep, we just had a window leak on our last trip that soaked my bed. Found one of the interior track drain slots clogged. I carry a small length of trimmer line in my toolkit to run down under the track liner and through the drain slots. Also, a little water bottle - like a squirt ketchup bottle - for flushing. Having a wet bed isn't fun. -
Galileo started following All windows leaking except exit window when washing.
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All windows leaking except exit window when washing.
Galileo replied to 2008RN's topic in General Discussion
Maybe it’s been addressed in another thread, but I have a “detail cleaning” of our windows in my schedule for tomorrow. we’ve had several days of very heavy rain here (Chicago area) and the whole bed was pretty soaked. The folks at the delivery “event” with us were adamant about keeping the drain holes clear - but the didn’t mention the drains in the slider tracks - which - if clogged - will let water drain into the interior. Pretty poor design IMHO. -
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12Volt issue inside trailer
Buddhabelly replied to Buddhabelly's topic in Mechanical & Technical Tips
Under the red tab on the black breaker box is a little swing arm that needs to be pushed back up into the breaker to make a complete circut. I couldn't get my camera under the breaker to take a pic. -
dwilley981 joined the community
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The Ugly Duckling – the Restoration of our 2016 Oliver Hull #113
jd1923 replied to jd1923's topic in Ollie Modifications
Just 4 days after our Oliver was delivered, I joined our great OTT Forum. My two favorite sections are "Where's Ollie" and "Ollie Modifications" where I frequent often! Early on, Bill @topgun2 referred to our hulls as "cousins" (our #113 and his #117). There are a lot of us with 2016 and older Olivers. These 10+ year-old Olivers have had nothing but special care through the years. I hear Scotty is just starting a renewal project of his own! You wrote "cost of ownership" vs. purchase price." As written above, I had budgeted 15,000 for upgrades (plus 1000 +/- hours in sweat equity) in addition to a very good used price for the hull. My detailed spreadsheet has documented a total of $16,120, so I'm a little over budget. This includes new D52 axles with Alcan Springs, 5 Victron devices, 900 Ah Epoch Essentials, new Chill Cube A/C and so many other documented upgrades. It includes an Emeril Air Fryer, new luxury bedding, new custom upholstered dinette seat cushions, additional shelving, multiple exhaust fans, etc. It includes every bracket, roll of tape, every nut and bolt I used in the last 3 years. I figure our cost of ownership, everything included, is 70% of the cost of a fully optioned new Oliver. Wouldn't trade her for a new Oliver, no way! I've made better choices in our upgrades, and I do better work than the contract installers OTT hires. Then there's the little things like this for example: Yeah, couldn't wait to ditch the dish! That thing was HUGE! I put a Winegard RZ-7500 TV antenna in its place (using 3M VHB tape, NO screw holes). It still appears to be large, but it's actually less than half the size of the Dish! As far as Starlink, I have that and our Pepwave cellular router built into the tow vehicle instead, so it's always with us while camping and on day trips. Picture shows the front roof completed, but before the detailing work. I hate caulking and I'm not good at it. I made a mess with Dicor caulk, not using that product again! But it looks great from the ground! 🤣 And no more useless Wi-Fi Ranger and cameras up top. Yes, the older hulls have some bonuses, some you mentioned, and the little things like separate switches for Entry and Side Porch lights (ours now have lights fore and aft too). Oliver Hull #113 is a family member. Our son Adam got to know her, camping the month of April around the Prescott NF. She will always be with us. 😎 -
The Ugly Duckling – the Restoration of our 2016 Oliver Hull #113
ScottyGS replied to jd1923's topic in Ollie Modifications
Another thought.... I know that Oliver is focused on selling new trailers... That's where their marketing is directed. But... How many of us remember the reason for the name "Legacy Elite". It's because this is a trailer that will endure. That you could hand down in your family over generations. JD's trailer is a perfect example of this. Oliver should feature this trailer in it's ads. TEN Years and still going strong! That's a story that shows the advantage of cost of ownership vs. purchase price. Good Job JD! -
I said "Summer Day".... not Nuclear Winter in FL! :-)
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The Ugly Duckling – the Restoration of our 2016 Oliver Hull #113
routlaw replied to jd1923's topic in Ollie Modifications
Nice job! Great work! -
Check the connections going into the back of the DC panel under the rear dinette seat. I had a similar problem and found a spade connector loose. A little crimp for a tighter fit of the red power wire was the solution.
