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When I greased my trailer the other day, I noticed that all of the bushings on the Monroe struts were cracked. I am wondering if I should replace the struts or just the bushings. Has anyone else seen this?

Several owners have added individuall heaters in the intersticial space between the hulls. The top choice is to get heat to the water liness entry area aft of the port bunk. This area tends to freeze first. I recall that he used a 500 watt 120V heater for this purpose. A second area prone to freezing is the cabinet space in the bathroom. For occasional use this would in my opinion be enough. However if you are where The Orca is, a forced air approach would be desireable. Intake air from the cabin and distribute it to both port and starboardd areas with extra air going on the port rear side would be my choice. GJ

Ya, We were visiting son last year in Kentucky, and decided to go down to the mother ship in Hohenwald. Driving through Nashville wasn't fun. At least the larger roads are better in Oregon. THe back roads in Oregon and Tennessee are pretty much the same. (yuk). We got a truma repair and a new AC. We enjoyed the last year's models on the sales floor. Several updates I liked, but not enough to buy upgrade. Good to know that Salem, Oregon has someone that could do some repairs.

If pulling on wires / switches and things temporarily work don’t discount the possibility that fiberglass dust may have gotten into a connection or switch. I’ve had this happen at times. Look for loose or contaminated connections as a possibility.

@Grizz000 No worries! I thought you might be out camping! Thanks for the info. Mossey

I'd agree with this if the bottom leaf was an overload type that didn't make contact with the leaf pack until a certain weight was exceeded. With the Alcan springs the bottom leaf is arced and looks to be always adding stiffness to the pack. Could be wrong.. Good question for Alcan.

I must be missing something on the 4 vs 5 spring decision. My physics-fu tells me that the spring return rate is set by the longest one or two springs. You chose the spring length, material and temper to set that rate. You then add more (and shorter) springs to take up more load (if needed) for the same rebound rates. What is gained by taking away the shortest spring???

I did. It should be findable as I posted pictures and instructions. Essentially I opened the third port on the Dometic heater and hard ducted it directly across the rear of the trailer. Turned 90 degrees forward and installed a flow adjuster right after it reentered the underbed area. I placed a diverter at that point, and sent part of the warm air directly down under the drivers side bunk. I also installed a 3" flex line running forward all the way to the forward dinette seat. I have been in minus 18 degree F temps in Republic, and the minimum temp under either bunk was 38 degrees. My friends trailer water froze every night by 9 pm. It is tight, but doable! The electric option just would not work for me as I use my Olly as an Elk Camp Cabin. I wanted an extra propane heat load, not an extra electric load.

@mossemi I applied it to both surfaces. I spread it with a 1/8" v-notch metal spreader. West Marine actually sells a plastic 1/8" v-notch spreader (and they are widely available,) but I used one I already had. Seemed to work great. The G/flex is easy to work with. Sorry for the slow reply - I either didn't get a notification that there was a post, or I didn't see it. Hope this helps!

Thanks for this post. I just completed the install the same way as @tallmandan. I would like to add that my attachment was very difficult to unscrew. Not sure if four years ago GM/Chevy made them differently...but mine had lock tight in the screw attachment. I would advise anyone doing this install to be very careful while attempting to unscrew the attachment. The cable is power over coax. The attachment is just a crimped connector. I had to fold back the rubber casing and grip it very tightly with a wrench to get mine undone. If the crimped attachment spins it will strip out very easily!

We finally got a window (and the courage to drive through PDX traffic) to visit the Oliver dealer in Salem, Oregon. It took about 30 minutes, and the tech seemed professional. Atta boys for the service team We also took a few minutes to look at the new Olivers that were at the dealership. They’re nice, but I suspect we won’t be buying a new trailer. I did like the compressor fridge and lithium batteries, but I don’t think it will be enough to sway us.

I have not seen or tried one, but they do look interesting. I’ve gone another route for rough terrain and have purchased a high clearance teardrop for my solo trips. The teardrop I mentioned above has a Max Coupler articulated hitch. While it’s nice in rough terrain, I can’t see myself taking the Ollie into those conditions.

Living on the Northwest coast of Washington we rarely get temperatures low enough to cause freezing issues while in winter storage. It does happen though and the potential for freezing damage does typically raise its head a few times each year while during the winter months. I have been giving some thought to the installation of an electric heater designed to keep warm air moving between the hulls when temps drop into the 10's & 20's. A small, high quality electric heater permanently installed which draws in cabin air and routes it through areas between the lower hulls where plumbing and other temperature sensitive components live could serve the dual purpose of protecting trailer components from freezng and help keep things warmish and dry. I understand this system would only be functional while on shore power. Anyone here designed and installed such a system?

If you are interested, here is the link to BB Technical White Paper. https://battlebornbatteries.com/technical-note-on-the-safety-and-design-of-the-battle-born-100ah-positive-terminal/

Just received our Alcan Springs 5-leaf with heavy duty hardware. We will be having them installed as 4-leaf. Scheduled for first of June around a short Indiana trip. Will do the two 50 mile drives same day and they will re-torque, and then after our Indiana camping trip for the 500 re-torque.

@DonnaDuane You left us hanging. What was the problem?

Some people are really smart. @Snackchaser You sir, are really smart.

Interesting! Are you starting a waiting list for your production model? 😁. Mike

Custom Automatic Leveling for the Oliver's Barker Jacks — Part 2 Here is some more detail of the automatic leveling project as it transitioned from an idea to a working prototype. The project evolved from concept with safety and trailer protection as core design priorities. Limitations were built into the software including current-based motor cutoffs and maximum leveling offsets to prevent over-stressing jack capacity and minimized frame stress. On the mechanical side, the design incorporates fail-safe circuits, redundant shutdown methods, and four levels of overcurrent protection. A side benefit is the electronic monitoring of jack condition where abnormal current can reveal lubrication issues, mechanical wear, or circuit degradation before they become catastrophic failures. First step was writing a program script with open source Arduino software, and then uploading it to an ESP-32 microprocessor. The ESP-32 is basically a $10 miniature computer with programmable memory and integrated WiFi module (I might develop a Leveling App later). It receives inputs from a Inclinometer and two 50 amp current sensors, and it sends outputs to a status LED, a piezo buzzer for audible tones, and a 8 channel Darlington driver that converts digital inputs to 12 volts for relay coils. Six 30/40 amp Bosch style automotive relays are wired in an H-Bridge configuration to run the jack motors in forward and reverse. With a basic design plan and software, a test board was needed for proof of concept before anything could be installed in the trailer. The test board included potentiometers to simulate jack current, and LEDs to indicate the jack's up and down movement. It had a status LED, an isolation relay LED, a piezo electric buzzer, and a circuit board mounted with the microprocessor, inclinometer, drivers, and power supply. These standalone plug-in modules are wired together with soldered jumpers on a generic printed circuit board. Testing resulted in many design and software changes as the bugs were worked out. During this time it became evident that the tongue only needed the inclinometer for leveling, no current sensor required. I also realized that the jacks should be run in decreasing intervals with a limited number of leveling attempts before timing out. Another improvement was to run the jacks uninterrupted in free air until they were firmly seated on the ground for stabilization — before starting incremental leveling movements as needed. Current values are easily adjusted if more or less stabilizing pressure is desired. Testing found a flaw with the inclinometer. Thankfully they came in three-packs and I replaced them because they wouldn’t stay calibrated. The inclinometers have accelerometer and gyroscope functions, and it turned out that the accelerometer has known drifting issues. After turning off the accelerometer in the software, it worked great! In the end, the Arduino script grew to over 1,000 lines of code. With a lot of trial and error, a sequence of operation was developed: When the Level button is pressed, the rear jacks lower without interruption until they are seated on the ground in a firmly stabilized position (phase 1). If the trailer is level at this point, then there is no further action and an audible “happy tune” indicates successful level was achieved. If the trailer is not level after phase 1, then the left or right jack is cycled in intervals starting at 1.5 seconds (~1/2” travel) depending on how close to level it is. As the trailer gets closer to level, the interval shortens to account for coasting and fine adjustment to within 0.2 degrees of level. During the roll leveling sequence, a pitch limit of 5 degrees prevents the rear jacks from inducing too much pitch. It's a safeguard that temporarily interrupts roll leveling while it moves the tongue jack to bring pitch back within limits. Phase 2 pitch leveling begins, if needed, after roll level is achieved. When roll and pitch are level, the “happy tune” is played. The system allows up to 20 level correction attempts per axis before declaring unsuccessful leveling with a “sad tune.” The operator can stop the leveling at anytime with the On/Off switch or by re-pressing either momentary button. The “Retract” function proved difficult to program because of the mechanical clutch. Originally it was programed to shut off when the mechanical clutch actuated in the parked position, which is 13 amps. This didn’t work because the jacks had a current spike when coming off load, and there were oscillating current spikes during the clack-clack of the clutch that caused shutdown before before a clack was heard. These spikes hadn’t shown up in the time compressed current chart, but they were picked up by the current sensors. This was resolved in the software with a current delay when coming off load, and a longer delay when the clutch actuated so a few reassuring clack-clacks could be heard for audible confirmation that the jacks were fully parked. The leveling system was designed so that the jacks manual switches could remain fully functional. However, the H-Bridge relay configuration reverses the motor polarity for the up or down direction, and that could cause a direct path to ground when using the manual switches. To prevent this, I used a normally open relay to isolate the ground when the leveling system is not being used. I used a single 250 amp generic lawnmower starter relay on a common ground bus for all 3 jacks. It seemed reasonable. .. what could possibly go wrong? Hope this is still interesting…Cheers! Geoff Please excuse poor photos, I just didn't take very many!

This is brilliant! Oliver already makes it pretty easy to level the trailer. But if I wanted to make my camping friends (even more) jealous, I would build this and watch them grimace with envy.

Exactly how I do it.

A 2' level does the job. Set on the rear bumper for side to side. Add levelers as needed, chock and disconnect. I take the 2' level up against the belly band and raise or lower to get level Actually a good idea to have the tongue raised slightly to allow flow in the tanks toward the back. Very simple

Not sure if this is of any help, but I have attached the dimensional drawing for the Oliver front box, FYI.

With a 7k trailer, if it was held only by the jacks (or if one jack lifted the tires) they'd be at 2,333 lbs each and the 2026 Barker 3000 VIP jack is rated to 3k lbs. So the limiting factor is the rear jack mounting. It's not nearly the same as the the front jack I think, but without looking (I'm not at the trailer) I think it might be attached to the frame? Oliver tends to over engineer at any rate which I approve of. Also unknown long term effects. Anyhow that's a crazy nifty solution, nuts to have that level of automation in a small trailer like this, but I think its great. What I like even better is that water valve panel, as beautifully done as it is the under bed solution is a PITA.

Impressive! Thanks for sharing.