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I've been using cushions to keep the drawers from opening until today... Yesterday I found the magnets that I've been looking for at Ace Hardware, they are 07217, 25lb magnets made by "The Magnet Source". They're more then strong enough to hold the drawers closed by themselves and they fit the original strike plates installed in the Oliver's perfectly. I had thought originally about just doubling up on the original magnets until I saw these Yesterday. I just had to mark and lower the middle and bottom drawer screws on mine, the top drawer lined right up. I had some good 1/2" sheet metal screws with a socket head that made them easy to install and though it says that it will hold 25lbs, it's maybe 6lbs of pull to open the drawers. So they are snug but still easily opened by anyone. Here's more pics and a pic of both the old and the new... major difference. I ended up screwing them in all of the way and then backing them out 1/2 a turn. I also adjusted the strike plates out enough to hit the magnets and hold solid. We will be heading down a washboard road here in a day or so to really put them thru the test... Well, I will be going really slow anyway... but still :) Reed

We have solar. We have the Zamp controller. Evidently it was changed and put in because it is simple to use. I like that and it works very well. I do not plan on going into any controller and squeezing the last amp out. We had it put in so that solar would work for us, not the other way around. Guess the KISS principle at work. We went with the standard counters. The "upgrades" are the same material just prettier and sit on top of the standard. I figure the wood panels can be refinished by me if I cut or burned them by accident. We just take extra care to protect our counters with cutting boards. If you notice, any Oliver put on the classified area, doesn't stay unsold long. With that in mind we wanted to make sure that we maintained its greatest resale value. We figured the best way was to maintain standard items of the most demand. Instant hot water sounded great, but we have never run out with a standard unit. $$$ saved. Standard toilet has never let us down.. more $$$ saved. Standard counter. $$$ saved. Standard fabrics have served us and our traveling companion very well. Choices we guess would depend on how you plan to use the unit.

We opted out of the microwave and am sure glad we did. The resulting cabinet has been an incredibly useful and much needed pantry for storing all kinds of stuff we use on a daily basis. In the Elite, there is just not a lot of storage, and this cabinet has really been useful. The interior dimensions are: 21-1/2"wide x 14" deep x 13" tall. The actual opening is a bit smaller because of the face frame and the door itself. That opening is 19-1/4 wide x 11" tall. Dave

Here is our new Oliver Legacy Elite II. We ended up having to have it towed to us by Trusted Transport/Vince Dwyer, who did a great job.

The entire interior of the cabinet is some kind of birch (or the like) plywood. That's just the lighting fooling the eye in the pic. All surfaces are the same color. There is also a rubber mat on the floor. Wine bottles fit nicely in there! Dave

Reed, set up a phone so you can video the galley drawers, they may open and close yet you would never know it. The only reason we knew ours were dancing is because we found a spatula lying on the floor. It had hopped out and the drawer closed itself again.... there was no other sign of distress. I hope your magnets work, but straps are 100% guarnateed, as long as you remember to rig them ;) John Davies Spokane WA

It looks as if that second home mortgage deduction will be going away, rats. That was one reason we were OK with financing. At least it appears we might keep the sales tax deduction, which for an Ollie in WA is just under 9% of purchase price. Yikes. I haven’t heard anything about solar tax credits. It’s hard to plan stuff when it all gets rearranged..... John Davies Spokane WA

I financed with Bank of the Ozarks working with Anita and is was painless. A 10,000 dollar deposit at signing the order to proceed, and Oliver worked with the bank and all i needed to do was on the day of pickup sign the bank documents that Oliver had ready for signature and the bank paid Oliver directly. We got a 20 year loan which is like a home loan and the interest paid is tax deductible.

The loan went fine. With financing Oliver does NOT require the middle payment, just documentation from the bank saying that the loan is “approved for x dollars”. The big pain was my CU would not do a rate lock for longer than 30 days, and they wanted to keep doing a credit check every month. I convinced them that they only needed to do an extra one just prior to our leaving to collect the trailer. (Lots of credit checks lower your score.) The VIN does not get created until the very end of production, when all ordered equipment has been installed (not counting any extras done when you get there) and after the trailer has been weighed. Once I received the VIN from Anita in Sales, I had her contact my loan officer directly to get her a list of the copies of the docs that she needed (invoice, statement of origin) and then the bank had me come by and pick up the check. Which I hand carried to TN and signed in the sales office. That was a little un-nerving. After signing and paying, we took the original docs and over-nighted them to my bank, from the post office in Hohenwald. Then we returned to collect Mouse and hit the road. Eventually.... All in all, it went better than I expected, since factory ordered RVs are not really common, nor are ones that get picked up 2500 miles away.... No regrets. BTW I used Boeing Employees CU, and Prudential for “full replacement“ insurance. The CU needed proof of complete insurance prior to issuing the check. Did that help? John Davies Spokane WA

Fuel cells are a cool concept but the Efoys don't create a lot of current. They're more like a battery charging mechanism than a direct power source if that makes sense. So it doesn't really replace a generator if you want to run an air conditioner, for example. But it could replace / supplement solar panels. OTOH if you consider lithium batteries to be too bleeding-edge, fuel cells definitely are.

In reference to solar options, for those outside the box, I've been following this thread and reading the associated literature, it's very interesting and seems promising, especially size and weight. http://www.airforums.com/forums/f37/the-fuel-cell-experiment-175300.html

I was at Hohenwald a few weeks ago to get some work done and had a chance to meet Scott Oliver. We talked about that series of videos for delivery day. That is definitely on their radar. My thoughts were that it would simplify and shorten the time needed to launch / deliver a trailer. This is something that was a concern in the past. (talked to Tommy Staggs about it) The videos would pay benefit both ways. For Oliver, it shortens the delivery time and saves man hours there and for future calls. For owners, it would be a ready source of information on how systems work and how to correctly perform maintenance like winterizing. Hopefully they move this project up the list. Anyways..... Welcome to the family. Hope you have many enjoyable trips in your Ollie and that our paths cross sometime ... somewhere in the future. Scotty

Final pic of new fixture with amber lenses Hard to duplicate this using 3M 4000 or the like. The butyl tape is tight, clean, and most importantly hasn't leaked a bit through all the downpours and sleet and snow that has followed me around this Fall! This is now an outdated fixture for Oliver. But I hope that anyone who may have silicone sealant on their rig and wants to get rid of it for real will find this post useful. Also if you want to add any accessory items like a plug for aux. solar panels, or need to reset a window, or whatever, will consider using this technique. Contrary to what some folks think of butyl tape, this brand has not oozed out in the heat or collected dirt and turned black. If you keep it tight to the fixture and use a quality product like Bed-it, you should be a happy camper! Ok, it's past happy hour..... Dave

In a nutshell, yes. We've had no problems in either of the Oliver's we've owned with the refrigerators cooling abilities in any temps. And the way they are installing them now, is even better than the way ours is. I don't think you'll have any problems.