Leaderboard

Mark, first off congratulations on your purchase of an oliver, one of the finest rv's made. I'll try to answer some of your questions. On the charging, yes to all of the above,your converter/charger takes over, and when your solar is insufficient you either need ac current from a plug in or generator. On the consumption side, all of your d.c. appliances draw from your batteries when in use, the solar just replenishes the power used and the converter/charger takes over power management when you're plugged in either with shore power or generator. Try not to go below 12.3 volts when your batteries are at rest, that's the 50% level with agm batteries. When the solar is charging the voltage can go as high as 14% but you have to wait until the batteries are at rest to get a true state of charge with the solar controller we have. geO is correct about the battery monitor, however I've done without so far by just monitoring my voltage early in the morning before the sun comes up and starts charging my batteries. It takes a while to figure your usage out without a separate monitor. This method is crude at best but so far so good, you shouldn't need to monitor your batteries when plugged in your converter takes over that task. I would strongly advise doing some research on battery management and inverter usage, there are multiple posts on this subject throughout this forum. Steve

Measure the distance from the centerline of the rack to the centerline of the two axles (D1), then do the same for the hitch (D2). The rest is algebra: rack weight x D1/D2 = reduced tongue weight. To measure the effect of taking the cans off the front, measure that distance to the CL of the axles (D3), divide by D2, and multiply that ratio by the weight of the cans. Add both results together for the total effect of moving the cans and adding the rack. Minimum hitch weight is typically considered 10% of the total. But of course, you're adding considerable yaw inertia by placing a weight on the tail of the trailer. FWIW, I towed with a basket on my bike carrier once this year with a fairly light weight (surely less than 100 lbs including the rack), and if anything felt that it towed a bit better - possibly because I've been towing without a WD hitch. But with such a light weight, I think that was just my imagination looking for something that wasn't there.

The air lift bags on my f150 are the second set I installed myself, the first set was on a 2003 Silverado that i bought new and sold when I bought the f150, they still work without issues. The installation on the f150 was really easy, simple bolt on and route air hoses, the Silverado required some drilling. steve

Thanks Steve, I was moving in the direction of the Air Lift brand so you just confirmed my thoughts. Did you install yourself or did you have the dealer do that? I am thinking of installing myself. It looked pretty straight forward.

Hobo, sorry about the slow response, I went with the air lift brand. It's a simple set up, no compressor, I just air up as needed. They only took about 1 hour to install on my F150. steve

It's been a long thread but to get back to basics, I won't be using an equalizer based on the recommendations early on in this discussion and based on the recommendation by the Anderson rep at the rally last year. (One ton Dodge diesel truck). Based on that, I think John's note above and your suggested height will suffice for my purposes. I will arrive with my hitch set up at 23.5" and then let my airbags level out the trailer and truck which should be minor. If after using it and tweaking ride height for a while, I find any handling issues, I can always move to the equalizer. Thanks again to all. This is a great forum.