All Activity

It's possible that you have an air-lock situation. Please see my procedure here: no pump pressure . It's worth a try.

Sometimes you get a wild hair and make impulsive travel changes. We were at Lost Dutchman one January and decided to visit our son/family in Durango. Once we got past Payson the temps started dropping. By the time we hit Farmington, NM we were in the 20’s. The week we were there overnight lows were teens and highs near 30. No trailer issues. Another January we were at Dead Horse Ranch and checked temperatures at Zion, highs in the low 60s. The campground there was empty and we stayed a week in an empty Zion National Park. On the drive back to AZ we had temps in the 20s, ran the furnace and got back to AZ with no issues. Travel flexibility! Mike

Back to the subject re the articulating hitch. Don't think we need one, even though I likely tow up and down more steep, angled and rutted dirt roads than many of you would dare! I feel safe with our upgraded 2 5/16" ball and Bulldog receiver. For those of you who want to learn more about hitches, check this out. Love this guy Tom Morton! He's the one who reviewed and installed both Turbro and Chill Cube A/C units in their RV. Quite a studied and capable young engineer. I searched for keyword 'hitch' on their website and got 6 hitch related articles. At bottom is one re the articulating hitch. 😎 https://www.mortonsonthemove.com/?s=hitch

My headphones keeping dropping the Bluetooth connection. This could be worse. I think I'd install Token Ring safety chains, just in case.

As posted on the Scamp facebook page, but I see no reason why this would not work just as well when towing an Ollie. Available one day only (today, April 1). This bluetooth connectivity capability answers so many issues faced by the typical Oliver owner like tongue weight, having to use Andersen hitch with 1/2 ton pickups, tow chains, and the 2” vs. 2 5/16” ball dilemma. If anyone was successful in getting ahold of one of these during the tight window of availability today, please post your experience with this seemingly too good to be true answer to all issues related to having to physically connect our trailers to our tow vehicles.

We’ve never towed in freezing temps and don’t plan to! 🤣 We use the furnace when it freezes overnight when home and haven’t winterized since we’re often leaving again soon.

Welcome to Club Oliver. You paid for your ticket, now ride. Celebrate with us when we see our Oliver brothers and sisters. Tell us when you see your first Oliver out and about in the wild. Most importantly, enjoy.

Works well for us!

I asked my Uncle AI (Claude) about methods and solutions. So I do not bore you, here's the final paragraph from Claude.ai. The biggest bang-for-buck combo is Brave + uBlock Origin + DuckDuckGo — takes about 10 minutes to set up and eliminates the vast majority of tracking and ads most people encounter.

We’ve run the furnace while driving too.

We use Brave for our browser and DuckDuckGo for our search engine.

Perhaps some of you will find this rather long video on the MDC line of Australian off road campers interesting. The attention to and level of detail this company goes to is off the charts.

Oh yeah, all your search history is being traced! It knows what you searched for and is feeding you what you like! I stopped using Google years ago, use MS Edge only if a website error occurs with my browser of choice. We use DuckDuckGo which removes many tracers. They’re not that smart yet, but of course getting smarter. I used to always get tire ads for a couple months AFTER I made my tire purchase!

12 volt heat trace is about 3 watts per foot, and I'm not sure how you would calculate the length needed to protect the hot and cold loops. We picked up our trailer during a terrible ice storm with icicles hanging off the trailer while going down the road. There was real concern of freezing pipes. We said: Damn the warnings, we're running the gas furnace while going down the road!

As far as I can tell, I’ve made the first automatic leveling system for the Oliver’s Barker stabilizing jacks! Maybe even the first 3-jack leveling system on a travel trailer! It’s simple to operate, safe, and works great! I built the leveling system as a novelty for my own entertainment, so I’m only posting it as a interest item not a recommended project. In reality, manually leveling with the electric jacks is already easy, particularly with a LevelMate, so automatic leveling isn’t really needed. There are even warnings that the jacks are stabilizers, not to be used for leveling. However, I believe the warnings are more about liability than capability, as long as the jacks are used within reasonable limits. I'd been thinking about an auto-leveling project for a long time, but was deterred by the thought of modifying the jacks with fiddly proximity sensors or revolution counters as used in conventional leveling systems. I didn't want to alter the jacks for a DIY project that might not even work. But then it dawned on me. The only time I really needed to know the position of the jacks, is when retracting them to their parked position. I wasn’t interested in returning the tongue jack to the truck hitch hight like some systems offer. So this led to a revelation that automatic leveling could be done with nothing more than current sensors mounted in a control box rather than on the jacks themselves. This was only possible because of the Barker jack’s mechanical clutch. When the jack reaches the end of its travel, the clutch activates with a distinct clack-clack sound. It was likely that clutch engagement would produce a unique current signature that could be used to detect when the jack is fully retracted. A plan was developing, but I needed actual amperage values for proof of concept. Fortunately I had a data logging ammeter, and the chart below illustrates the results for one of rear jacks starting from its fully retracted parked position. The jack was extended through free air until it touched ground and began picking up load, maxing out when the wheel lifted off the ground. Then it was retracted to the parked position until the clutch actuated: I didn’t include the tongue jack chart because it's far less dynamic — it's always under load, and the clutch doesn't normally actuate during leveling. The clutch only comes into play after trailer is hooked up to the TV and the tongue is manually retracted. The amperage results confirmed that current sensors could work, and beyond detecting the parked position, they could also be used to distinguish the different leveling phases: rear jack extension until firm ground contact for stabilizing, and then transition to "roll" leveling if needed. Completion of the rear jack phase could then trigger the tongue jack phase to handle "pitch" leveling. The amperage chart became the basis for the circuit and software design. No proximity sensors. No revolution counting. No permanent modifications — just two wires to each jack, a component box, and a control board. Sounds easy, but this was only just the start of a long process to perfect the system. I hope someone finds this interesting! Cheers! Geoff

I have to admit the Black Series are not the most attractive campers out there but they do appear to be rugged. Thanks for the info.

He initially went to a Black Series HQ19, we saw it at Quartzsite just after he got it. He’s since moved on to other Australian trailers. He hasn’t been on the forum in a while but does answer PM’s. Mike

I find it VERY interesting that recently there are more ads for Battle Born on my MSN page. Anyone else seeing this increase in advertising? Bill

That’s exactly what we miss as well…the Alde radiant heat system is amazing!

Thanks @mossemi read through the entire post. I remember raspy from the early days of the forum and recall him going another route but did not know he was the Mchitch distributor. Watched an excellent video from one of the guys at ROA Off Road in Utah describing the various articulating hitches. The best one I've seen yet is a new one on the market, American made and engineered by the folks at Pause travel trailers that incorporate a ball hitch. Massive heavy duty thing too but see no way to use it on an Oliver without massive mods to the Oliver frame. I wish Oliver had gone the route of an articulating hitch and independent suspension.

@routlaw This link will take you to a post from @Raspy, who was the US distributor for McHITCH! It is the articulating hitch that Overland installed on his LE2. Mossey

One other possibility is that if you fully drained your FWT for winterizing, the water pump may be sucking air because the siphon tube in the tank is not in water. This was an issue with the earlier Olivers (pre siphon tube) before they changed the design. Dave

Looking forward to reading this interview. Thanks!

Congrats on your new Ollie! Like how the new windows look, too!

Yes.., my Oliver is great but I do still miss my nuCamp 400...sure wish the Oliver had the QUIET furnace heating system.