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Camping in Wyoming, I met Rob & Amy, co-owners of BABCOCK METALS, of Talmage, UT. Rob is a world class welder / fabricator who does work on major industrial products and household furnishings. He also loves the challenge of creating custom designed solutions for customers' unique needs . . . such as an elegant and strong 2" receiver hitch for the back of my Ollie which allows unhindered access to the sewer hose inside the rear bumper and removal of the spare tire cover. Let me show you his creation . . . It started with two machined stainless steel brackets for the exterior of the frame, cut to permit the bumper to swing down without interference. The brackets each had three holes to accommodate a 5/8 inch hardened grade 8 bolts. Inside the frame, he added six solid blocks of aluminum which had also been drilled for the 5/8 inch grade 8 bolts. Using stainless steel curved tubing with a 2 inch ID, Rob measured the angles required to ensure clearance would permit access to the rear bumper compartment and spare tire. Finally, he made a 2" receiver, curved exactly for welding onto the stainless steel pipe. His artistry at welding is evident in the finished product. After applying a brushed finish to the exterior of the hitch, Rob installed it onto The Wonder Egg. The hitch fits the rear portion of the frame perfectly and each of the six grade 8, hardened steel bolts was snugged down with 200 ft lbs of torque. I feel very confident in the ability of this custom hitch to do the job. If you ever think that you may be traveling near eastern Utah and are in search for a hitch solution for your Ollie, contact Babcock Metals (678.480.0204) and I bet they could create just what your are looking for.

I wanted to offer a few suggestions for removing the window seals and tracks. Please read the entire message first as my writing style is a little disjointed. And if you think it tough to read, you should be grateful you don’t have to think like this.? First off, only do this if you feel you can’t clean the tracks and drain slots with brushes, vacuums and compressed air. It takes me about 30 minutes to remove and replace the seals, minus the drying time for the seals. Removing the outside seal for the fixed glass track is pretty simple, I used a metal pick to raise the seal enough to grab it by hand and then pulled it out. The sliding glass track has a different seal that is actually 5 individual pieces. Without looking closely you would think that it is all one piece. The top and bottom horizontal pieces are straight and run the length of the track. The curved corners are two separate pieces with a short straight vertical piece between them. My trial and error procedure is to remove the window shade assembly first and then the screen. The screen has spring clips on the top. Slide the screen open enough to grab it on both sides and push up while pulling the bottom out. With the screen out, remove the sliding window rubber stop. I think a piece of masking tape on the window frame will prevent the sliding window from scratching the frame with window stop removed. Wish I had thought about that before scratching my frame. Working from the outside, remove the outside seal. Next remove the short vertical seal between the curved corner pieces in the sliding window track using something like the pick and a butter knife. The seal is U shaped and it is necessary to fold either of the side portions into the middle and then carefully remove the entire piece. Removing the short vertical piece first will allow you to slide the bottom corner piece upward into the space created by removing the short vertical seal. Do not remove the corner pieces as the are very fragile due the the cuts is the sides which allow the seal to fit the round corners. Now begin removing the long bottom seal by folding both sides in and lifting it out of the track an inch or so at a time. After you get about half of it out you can begin sliding it out from under the window. Now you can clean the seals, tracks and slots by which ever method you prefer. Allow the seals to dry if you cleaned them with soap and water. I treat mine with 303 protectant before reinstalling them. If you are any questions, please ask and I’ll provide any help I can. Mike

Lets do nbr 2. ? I had a great time and met a great bunch of like minded Oliver owners. To Matt Duncan, thanks for the great door prizes where all participants were winners. Even a prospective Oliver owner was surprised when they won a door prize. What other rv manufacturers do that?

How about a few more pics? And, another big THANK YOU to Oliver and Matt Duncan for providing attendance prizes!

OLIVER FORUM GUIDELINES Welcome to the Oliver Forum, a great place for Oliver Travel Trailer owners and future owners to interact, share knowledge, solve problems, and most importantly, to develop friendships. Respectful and considerate responses help build this community. You’ll find a wealth of experiences here, and many owners willing to share their experiences. Have fun, but please keep others’ viewpoints in mind. Respectfully state your point, share your information, or ask your question. Keep it casual and friendly. Reread your post before you hit submit. Is it helpful? Thoughtful? Please try to stay on the original topic of the thread. Confusing the issue may cause the member’s original question to go unanswered. Start a new topic if you have a new question. It’s important for all members to have the environment and opportunity to contribute in a considerate manner, and to learn. Inflammatory and trolling comments shall be removed by a volunteer moderator. We encourage members to use the “REPORT” function (bottom right corner of each post) to help us, as we’re not reading every post, 24/7. If your post is removed, you’ll receive a PM about it. If there is a continuing problem, further action may be taken, up to and including your removal from the forum. Some inflammatory topics to avoid include religion and politics. We’re all about camping, and Oliver campers. Over the years, we’ve seen a few simple topics turn into heated debates. It’s natural to want to jump in, but honestly, it’s often better to let it go, and hit the report button, instead. We moderators are avid campers. Even as we write this, we are all out camping, some with limited bandwidth. We respond as quickly as we can, and the sooner we know, the better. Some have asked why our forum is linked to the Oliver website. Valid question. Since the beginning of our forum in 2008, Oliver Travel Trailers (OTT) has paid for our Oliver “sandbox”, including our web space and an administrator who knows way more than we do about maintaining the software, for which we are very grateful. OTT DOES NOT CENSOR OR INTERFERE with the moderators’ management of the forum content. Moderators are not employees of OTT. We are Ollie owners, and receive no remuneration. OTT does have a employee designated to read the forum for the purpose of improving the “Ollie Experience” for all, but that’s a few minutes a day in a busy job description. If you should ever have an issue or a warranty claim, call tech support. Your post might not be seen on the forum by an Oliver employee. With that in mind, we moderators ask you to communicate directly with the company and afford them an opportunity to satisfy any serious needs before flaming OTT on the forum. We are not asking that anything to be swept under the rug. Just, please, let Oliver Travel Trailers have the first shot to meet and exceed your expectations. Sometimes, communications here may be misinterpreted, because the written word just doesn’t carry the visual clues of face to face conversations. Should you believe a post is a little ill-mannered, consider the poster might be trying to be helpful, but isn’t able to put his or her words together the way you might. Forums work best when our skin tends to be a bit on the thicker side. Remember as well, whatever you post will likely be permanent, and picked up by automated internet software programs. Though this is our forum, it’s still on the world wide web. Our words may very well outlive us. Please, be especially patient with newbies. Our search feature is still being tweaked, and they may not have found an answer by simply using “Search”. You may remember your own newbie questions . . . of many years ago. If you have already answered the same newbie question as many times as you care to, relax and allow someone else to step up and reply. Help foster a community of teachers. We recommend all phone numbers and email addresses be sent in private messages and NOT posted. If you must post personal data, we suggest you post in a manner so trolling automated internet programs will not grab your personal information and use it nefariously. For instance, a phone number might be “8ThreeZero, 5one5, 9 2 eight seven”, or for an email address, something like “Bill DOT Fisher at flyboy DOT com”. Please reread this, and help us continue to make our forum a great place for everyone. We hope you enjoy our forum. Thank you, bugeyedriver, SeaDawg, ScubaRx, Mike and Carol, topgun2 , Mossemi Oliver Owner Moderator Team

We just spent 4 nights in Campground 1 at David Crockett State Park in Lawrenceburg, TN. Campground 1 is older, but Campground 2 has just been redone and it is real nice. We couldn’t get a site in CG 2 but we did drive through and look at it. No sewer hookups, but the sites were so level it wouldn’t be a big deal to just pull to the dump station and then go back to your site if you didn’t want to use a tote. https://tnstateparks.com/parks/campground/david-crockett Thirty-two miles (about 45 minutes) from Hohenwald and much nicer than (the local CG) in Hohenwald. Good BBQ place in Lawrenceburg: https://ricksbbq.com/ More good BBQ and a great meat market near Summertown TN: https://g.co/kgs/3V9hEZ Bill

We live on Route 66 in mid MO and just drove 2200 miles to pick up our 2009 Elite. We have been retired for 18 years and traveling for most of that time. This is our third trailer and our first Oliver. Let me say I have never had a trailer that pulls so easy. We look forward to many trips with the Oliver and hope our paths cross at sometime with other Oliver owners. Hull #39

Thanks. Drive safe Shy1 and enjoy the warm winter haven. You are a few weeks ahead of us.

Bill, Hope you don't mind me posting some photos we took there last year. The Other Bill!

Sounds like this was a great event. Maybe more micro-rally’s will start popping up in other regions! Mike

Mirna and I want to thank everyone for coming to the Micro Rally! We had a wonder time and hope everyone else did as well. Our goal was to get to know more Oliver owners in a wonderful campground on the beach and we did just that. Over the course of the week we had 11 trailers and 18 people join us. We traded stories, knowledge and campgrounds we loved to visit and even had potential Oliver owners join us for dinner. While many of us did not know each other well, we left with new friends and bonds that will last a lifetime. Special thanks to Oliver and Matt Duncan for the gifts and Bill (Topgun) for making all of us winners! I would personally like to thank Mike and Krunch for keeping our Fish Fry dry & clean, all of you who brought delicious side dishes to make the meal a true feast! For those of you thinking about doing something like a Micro Rally in your local state, I would highly recommend it. It is a bit of planning but what you create and gain far outweighs the effort many times over. If we can help you think about planning or answer questions about how to do this, please reach out to us. Owning an Oliver makes you part of a wonderful family and getting together is great fun!