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Interested in hearing about your Anderson testing. We have an F250 with the 7.3 without the Anderson and have been towing it around Idaho, Utah, Montana, and into Banff. It has worked great! I have very much appreciated the extra payload and stability when going down the steep grades.

Nice!

@Rivernerd Congrats on your new F-350 with Godzilla! Looking forward to the WDH report!

These look pretty awesome, thanks for the tip! The '26's don't have touch lights, but plain jane bright white which cheesy little switches. Olivers have a huge amount of lighting for a small trailer but I use them all. Getting to choose your temp is amazing! How good is it, which one did you choose? Otherwise the remembering the state is a huge feature too. Choosing blue for a nightlight is absolutely brain dead though, it should have been deep dark red to preserve night vision and not wake you up. Blue is a morning light and is the clue to your brain that its time to wake up. Oh well ...

After 4 years towing our Elite II with a Tundra with 5.7L engine, which often made me nervous on freeways in traffic, we finally upgraded. We recently bought a Ford F350 with the 7.3L "Godzilla" gas engine with which to tow our Oliver. The 2019 Tundra has become my "river rig", which tows my raft trailer, often on bad roads. If our plans work out, "Godzilla" will haul Hull #1291 from Idaho to the East Coast and back this late summer/fall. Before then, I plan to try towing both with and without the Andersen weight distribution hitch (since I already own it), just to see if I can tell a difference. I will report how it goes!

That was one of the easiest parts of the installation. 🙂

Chilling at Lottis Creek Campground in the Gunnison National Forest listed my canvas wall tent on the FB marketplace in Gunnison, Crested Butte and Buena Vista its my emotional support tent 😢

Nice looking installation! The previous owner of our 2015 LE2 also installed gutters, they divert loads of water, too!

Perhaps I am beating a dead horse on this subject and thread but wanted to add a few things that might be of interest to those with Lippert 8800 series of windows. This past week I ordered 3 sample packs from Steele Rubber in NC which includes many if not all of their rubber weather stripping and glass sliding seals they manufacture. They arrived today. The samples seem to be well made, albeit very expensive for what they are. On my unit the outer most rubber w/s does not nor has it ever touched the sliding glass window and in fact misses the glass by a full 1/8th of an inch. Needless to say our windows were more like a sieve than a sealed window. Weeps holes do little to nothing to mitigate the incoming water during heavy rains. For those of you who need to replace their exterior rubber w/s for what ever reason the part # I have ordered is 70-4500-257 and this sample does indeed provide a relatively tight seal against the sliding window. This part also has a tighter fit in the channel, a good thing. No doubt the wrong w/s was installed on our windows given its rather loose fitting in addition to it not being wide enough to seal against the sliding window. Effectively the original does nothing at all to seal water. Steele Rubber company has a huge amount and variety of gaskets and seals making it nearly impossible to determine the correct fit without the sample packs. They also produce a much different type of glider seal/track that appears to be better and less likely to allow further leakage into the window channels. The ones that came with these windows do nothing to prevent water from entering into the channels and dripping into the cabin. The part # for that item has conflicting information between the website and the sample pack ID's they sent. It is either 70-3577-58 or 70-3577-256 come in 8ft lengths and priced at nearly $49 for each length. The exterior w/s piece is sold by the foot at $7 per foot. In addition to the effort of sealing the windows I have also finally added gutters over the windows. I put this off for a long time mainly because I didn't have faith in these small channels being effective during a downpour. I also installed them a bit different than most by gently curving the ends diagonally away from the window. The sharp bend pointing toward the ground never made sense to me and also caulked above and under the J channel to provide a longer lasting seal, hopefully. Thanks, hope this helps some others

I’ll call (probably), but still won’t change the axels. I’m at 0% gain on the freeways now and only go up to an exciting 0.5% when in traffic. Don’t use the brakes much basically

Dexter builds axles according to customer (Oliver) specifications, contact Dexter customer service during normal business hours with your axle serial number they can email a Build Sheet for your axle. When you're talking to them they can tell you if you have 12" brakes along with any other questions, I'm guessing you have 12" brakes.

OK. Yeah the Alcan guy on the phone asked if I also wanted to install new axels? “Uh, no, why?” I explained that they were D52’s with the spring derate, to which he replied that the brakes were (maybe?) different. Like I say he didn’t seem confident of that and I wasn’t really buying it, I think from our discussion we can conclude that we believe it’s just a stock D52.

Factory has changed stoves several times. I'm assuming your stove has a different grate system.

Sounds like you have it right. You can get additional information from Dexter on your axle assembly by contacting Dexter customer service with the axle serial number, to get a build sheet emailed from them. Here's a video about the tag you posted:

Your stove sure looks a lot different than mine.

Right The question is whether these have gimped 3500 brakes, maybe the conversation is getting a little mixed. Just realized I misinterpreted what scuba was saying, I thought he meant that a 12” drum means a different brake than the standard D52, but on re-reading I think he means that’s just a D52. Those drums look like they’re 12”, and from the label we know 26’s have D52’s derated to 3500. Long story short I think these are stock 52’s with the on paper derating due to the springs. Speak up if I’m missing something

Hermann has a city park campground. Cindy looked at the bathhouse. She said they were older but well kept and clean. https://hermannmo.com/campground/

The wineries are in and around Hermann.

We rolled into Dr. Edmund A. Babler Memorial State Park yesterday. It is about 30 miles due west of the Arch in St. Louis. It is a nice park, better than average bathhouse and really nice camping spots with full hookups. https://mostateparks.com/park/dr-edmund-babler-memorial-state-park We went to two wineries today. https://stonehillwinery.com/ https://adampuchtawine.com/ Both were very nice, and there are many more to see. The countryside here is beautiful. After the wine tasting at Puchta we bought two cases All the wines are fashioned after German wines.

Another way to find brake size is measuring the drum diameter and brake shoe height. Last time I had the drums off for bearing grease repack, seal replacement and brake inspection, measured Ollie's Dexter 5200lb axle brake drum: Edit: There is also a tag attached on the axle from Dexter (serial number also engraved on axle) that can give additional information about your axle, information on one of my axles emailed from Dexter:

The waddling will occur with the 1750s every time you hit uneven pavement, like driving up the apron to a service station or taking a bridge seam or RR tracks on an angle. I've heard all 2026 have D52s and if the label states such it should be so. To be sure, you cannot tell from the front picture, since OTT used a 6-stud bolt pattern on all (5-stud is standard for 3500 axles). You must get under the trailer, look at the back of the brake backing plate. If you see on the back 5 studs in a pentagon shape, they're 5200 LB axles. The 3500s with 10" brakes have 4 mounting studs in a square pattern.

Dunno, what do you think?

Agree, not sure how much I believe the hype. Shocks have a simple job, have been around forever, hard to believe it can be improved that much. Anyhow at $40 each its a cheap upgrade Good to hear. I get a little (non problematic) side waddle. It’s the porpoising thats annoying, if that goes away I’ll be happy.

Yeah, reason enough. They certainly do look better, and the Google search assistant sure found all the good marketing copy. I'd like to know how shocks are rated technically. If I had one of each brand new, I'd push them on a scale and see the force in LBS it takes to compress the shock! Not sure that is a valid test but could see relative difference. What I found on our hull, same Monroe shocks before and after the Alcan Springs upgrade is the hull used to waddle like a duck and would porpoise (without the WDH) on the 1750 springs. Switch to Alcan 2750 LB leaf springs, same Monroe shocks, and there is barely any movement in any direction. I'd bet I can take the shocks off and it wouldn't matter, because the leaf springs have much less movement. I also believe the top-heavy E2 sways so much with the 1750s, t causes the shock failures (and spring failures for that matter). I have a 7K dual-axle flatbed trailer at home. It was designed with no shocks. I load a SxS and dirt bikes on it. It doesn't move around at all since it has a low center of gravity. It has 1750s but loaded weight is only about +/- 4K LBS. These came off our Oliver after we got it in 2023, yeah UGLY! 🤣 They used to be yellow years ago. At least they were MADE IN U.S.A. I'll order Bulldogs when the Monroes fail, unless there's something better when needed.