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Great to have other blogs posted, we will check them out. Our blog is www.twolanetouring.com. Our goal is to visit and photograph the 417 National Park Service units and that is the primary reason we purchased our Oliver Elite. Our blog has been active for over three years and we post at least a photograph every day. On travel we do a daily diary and I have dedicated sections to camping sites, restaurants and galleries of the National Park sites we have visited and photographed (but always running behind on that!) There are about 150 galleries up. We also have photos of the Oliver under "gear" and gradually add upgrades to the photos - most of those ideas came from this forum. We will complete New England parks over the next four weeks. There are the occasional short essays on camping, costs, photography, planning etc.

Greetings from Neil & Marybeth in Harrisburg, PA. We're really excited! Our Oliver Elite II, Hull #406, starts production this week! We have some short shakedown outings planned for December, and an extended trip to FL in Feb/Mar to escape the cold winter doldrums. Our tow vehicle is a Toyota Tundra CrewMax 5.7L V8. We enjoy scuba diving, paddling, hiking, and soon traveling in our Ollie. Our plan is to explore our beautiful country before we decide where to settle down in retirement. Many thanks for the wealth of information that's posted in the forums. It was very helpful as we planned our Ollie. Hopefully we can meet some of you when we attend the Ollie Rally in May. Marybeth & Neil

We needed a place for our collections of road and nature guide books. We did something similar in our Casita. In our LE2, we used adhesive Velcro to attach a shelf in the rear of the dinette, under the table. We used 2 sizes of refrigerator boxes, also secured with adhesive Velcro. One holds trade sized paperbacks, the other accommodates larger formats and the various handouts one gets from campgrounds. It’s road-tested, and very secure, and doesn’t get in the way of our legs Dave and Ruth Hull 316

"It may be OK, but you should add 1/4 stainless flat washers on either side of the eyelet. Or better yet, consider having a correctly sized one crimped on the end of the cable." Having a great big hole hugely reduces the area for current to flow, not good when you are expecting it to carry a very high amp overload in an emergency…. a 1/4 stud needs a 1/4 eye. In addition, the connection is much more likely to get loose from vibration since there is so much room for the terminal eye to shift sideways. Unfortunately the tech who installed your cable did not understand this." You're better off putting a lug with the correct size hole on there. READ THIS From Xantrex before adding washers to the terminal. OK if it's between the nut and the lug but not between the lug and the terminal. "Q: Should I put a washer between the cable terminal and inverter, or battery connector? TECH DOCTOR: NEVER put a washer between the conductor and the connector! All the ground wires in our cars/trucks have those star washers to make a ‘better electrical connection.’ However, that is acceptable in this circumstance for penetration of paint and due to the low current needs of a 14 gauge wire. On the other hand, when you’re putting 4/0 welding cable on a 3000W inverter, and you put a steel (high resistance) washer between the copper, tin, or brass cable ends and connectors (lower resistance), you create an electrical bottleneck that will get extremely hot. I’ve seen tons of inverters in repair with melted insulators around the DC connectors which is a sure sign that the flat washer, or lock washer, was placed between the connector and the cable. The lock washer, or star washers, are intended to be in direct contact with the bolt-head or nut to reduce the chance of loosening." http://www.xantrex.com/documents/Tech-Doctor/Universal/Tech4-Universal.pdf - Randy

Bill, After adjusting/lubing the 3" black tank valve & cable, it continued to bypass when in the closed position. Replaced blade valve and seals today following Valterra video instructions starting around 3:10. New Valterra 3" black tank valve body and seals: Valve located under dinette seat: 3" Black tank valve on RH side: Loosen 3" black tank hose to allow removal of the 3" blade valve: Removing cable mounting bracket: 3" Valve removed: Build up on seal surfaces contacting valve blade causing bypass: Silicone lubricant used on seals and blade rod: New valve/seals installed and working great: https://www.valterra.com/product/waste-valve-body-3-with-coupler-seals-hardware/?pcat_id=1445

This really embarrasses me because it took 18 months to finally figure out what was going on. The waste pipe has always flopped around and it never occurred to me to get on my knees with a strong flashlight for a close look. I discovered that at the very front (dark) end of the hose compartment is a 5” hole where the 3” pipe exits the trailer. There is supposed to be a big flanged plastic grommet inserted into the hole to seal it. Mine was two inches back on the pipe. It had never been pushed into place. I drove it into position with a wood stick and a big mallet. The last little bit at the 6:00 position was tough, but I wedged a 2x4 under the pipe and finally got the last 30 degrees of grommet to snap firmly into place. Now the pipe does not move, nor will huge amounts of road dust enter there. If your pipe moves at all, check the grommet. It should look like this, fully seated all around. You can feel with a finger if there is a gap anywhere: Fixing it should RADICALLY slow down the nuisance dust buildup in my interior compartment: I will vacuum the dust out once more to see if it is stopped for good. This is what typically comes out of that rear compartment after dusty roads: John Davies Spokane WA

For your dog, please make sure to use a pure benadryl or generic. Not a cough medicine with acetaminophen or sudafedrin or ibuprofen... andi get the children's formula, so it doesn't have achohol. Many human medications are used for dogs, but some of them are toxic to them. As I recall, many of our otc pain relievers, and especially ibuprofen. I've read that some medications do truly degrade over time. I always check mom's nitroglycerin, as I was told by her cardiologist that it was useless after a year. Others, not so much. Personally, I have no problem with any expired allergy med or ibuprofen, but that's not a recommendation from me, either.... Sherry

Welcome from Maine Two pieces of advice: Probably half the things you have gathered, in the spare room, can be put back. The chain saw and axe can go back, just keep the hatchet. The 100' of rope and clothes reel are a little too much. A light line and a few clothes pins will do. Plan to get off the Interstate. Put the electronic apps in the glove compartment. When you come to a stop sign flip a coin. Heads to the left, tails to the right. Some of the best nights and sights of this country are hidden from the guide books. After all, that is the advantage of an Oliver... you don't need a 5 star campground.

The correct dosage of diphenhydramine (Benadryl) for dogs is 1 mg/pound. I recommend buying liquid diphenhydramine to be able to accurately administer the dose for smaller pets. Although a larger bottle (greater than 100 dosage units) may seem like the best deal, they will probably go out of date long before they are all used. Just an old retired Pharmacist’s advice.

I must say, you guys are really good! How come you know so much and after 62 years on this planet I am so lacking! Even looking at this stuff, I doubt I would recognize this as an incorrect connection. Clearly, I am at the mercy of Oliver folks knowing what to do when they build my Oliver and afterwards keeping a close watch on the forum for this expert advice. Pictures are really a help for amateurs like me - thank you for taking the time to clearly describe with words, pictures, links, and guidance. Is it reasonable to hire an "expert" to do an annual quality/safety inspection to hopefully catch potential problems (similar to taking my Toyota Tundra to the dealer for routine maintenance since I am not an automotive expert)? Maybe an annual trip to Hohenwald for a service department checkout (TN is a beautiful state to camp, especially in the Fall).

Oh dear, I can see that this was a mistake. http://www.hitchitch.com/links I've been sucked in ...

John, you are right, they would be costly if I gave her two a day. Even though the directions "recommend" treating daily, I never have. I toss her one or two based on what I see rolling in & get the results claimed. Happy T®ails! Chris

Marybeth and Neil, Welcome to the forums! Our Ollie went into production August 17. The wait is excruciating and our spare room is getting full! LOL Happy Trails! Kenny & Penny

Our blog isn't on YouTube, that's just the movies. I made movies for years but basically retired almost completely from it this year. The continuation of our blog is on this forum, here - http://olivertraveltrailers.com/topic/reed-karens-blog/ We went to a desolate part of Arizona that had almost no cell service from January to March and I was back gold mining as a hobby. I tried posting a few times but the service was too slow to post pics, so I lost interest for a while... Now we are back traveling finally and at a place with good service ? Reed Another way to see what people are writing is to visit their profile page on here, then scroll down and choose their topics. John's page and posts are all listed on his page and basically it looks like a blog when you put the posts all together ?

Congratulations. Welcome.

I'm sorry to see this, it makes life with our furry friends tough sometimes. One trick used to condition pups to the sound of gunshot is a loud noise, usually a blank shell, activated at feeding. Perhaps a graduated conditioning with older pets would represent a similar effect. Doesn't have to be a gunshot, a recorded approximate sound. My Chessie, thinks a loud crackling noise is a call to arms - seems the DNA takes over - he looks up - as if a duck or goose is supposed to fall from the sky. he also doesn't know he is 95 lbs., he thinks he is a toy poodle in this respect.

try "Hitchich" the site aggregates rv blogs

I still fail to see the point of a Facebook group. All it does is siphon posts and solutions from this site to make both less useful.

This thread caused a lot of consternation for a lot of folks. Now that it has been resurrected it looks like it is having the same effect on current future buyers. The really negative comments were from one owner. Most everyone else, even with some initial problems, were happy campers. I listed the initial issues I had and my total satisfaction of how they were addressed by the Oliver company. There’s much more positive in this thread than negative. Mike

Thanks Bill! Right you were. There is no control box. No wonder I couldn’t find it. Sorry to take a while to reply- I moved residences, and we all know how that goes.

Yep, the smoke was bad there John, we are house sitting Karen's mom's house for a month or so Florence, OR. We do love it here on the Oregon coast. The Blue Bucket was fun and I pulled some nice gold there when I had time at the end. I made some new friends, was given free reign on running material thru my friend Rick's trommel and pulled twice the gold out of a spot that I found over everyone else all summer. My last clean up, in the pic, had people shaking their heads because I had put others into that same spot before, and they were really happy, but I have a style that a lot of people in Eastern Oregon don't understand... So I pulled a lot more gold out of each clean up. Everyone was happy that we were there and it was fun, but being retired and volunteering is what I prefer these days :) Reed

Ok, it's been months since we posted or looked at the forum because we actually took a job... Lol. Now that things are almost back to normal, we are back. My tablet isn't dependable, it won't take pictures anymore so, we have a new welcome addition to our trailer, and it's a water softener! A new tablet is next. Soft water... Wow! We don't use it all of the time, just when we are in a really hard water area but it sure is nice! Reed https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KVPNVJ6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1