Leaderboard

My water heater quit working on gas a couple of days after delivery. I did some basic troubleshooting and determined after ten minutes that the ignitor was not firing. The system would cycle on and off three times, then lock out with a solid red light. The overtemp switches were not tripped, and there was gas, which I proved by carefully sticking a long camp stove lighter in the burner hole. I clicked the lighter and the flame POPPED and whooshed out and burned all the hair off the back of my hand. Check, there is gas! Note to self: do not do this again... I called Jason at Oliver Service and asked if he could send me a replacement board so I could install it myself. He told me that they do not warranty the appliances and I would have to take it to an RV dealer for repair. Fine.... I found a new OEM module on Amazon for $79, and also a much better aftermarket one for about the same price, but it would require a new plastic cover. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B0002MG2IK/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=IY2Y0Y0X7RVZF&colid=1X5H11EH41351 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B007HRVXY6/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I3LZPCEN833TPC&colid=1X5H11EH41351 Since it was going to be a warranty repair, and I am a confirmed cheapskate, I scheduled an appointment at a local shop in Spokane. They told me it would be three weeks before they could see me, and that they stocked a lot of boards for the Suburban heaters, so most likely they could fix it while I waited. I told them that I would be surprised if the job took more than fifteen minutes, and access to it was great. Three weeks later I showed up, checked in, watched with concern as they took Mouse away, and then I waited. Half an hour later I was called into the office. "The board is bad." ME: "Right, I knew that and I told your tech." "In order to do this under warranty we have to order a replacement board from Suburban, and it will take two to six weeks to get here, do you need the water heater to work before then?" ME: silence, counting to ten very slowly. "Sir?" ME: "I do need it to work on propane. Is there an alternative?" "We can install an aftermarket Dinosaur Electronics board, it is a much better part and has a five year warranty, and we have plenty of those in stock since the Suburban boards fail so often." ME: Sinking heart. "How much would that cost?" "The board is $129 and the cover is $10, and it will be $279 total with labor." ME: "I wish this was mentioned when I talked three weeks ago. Just put it back together and I'll order the part from Amazon and fix the heater in two days." "OK, fine, that will be $50 plus tax for the diagnosis." As I left, the tech who did the work told me quietly, "I left your old board on the floor at the entry, and I also left a used one that was in our junk box. We strip stuff like that off old water heaters when we scrap them. It will probably work fine for years. They sure did build your trailer nice!" I was floored and relieved, and my faith in mankind got a very small boost. I thanked him and left with Mouse, feeling a lot better. I got home, plugged in the board and the heater fired right up. Woohoo! My old (brand new) board that failed (water pump is to the left): The underside, showing the bottom of the fried resistor. The white foam strip goes on the PC board and keeps it off the mounting surface (the water pump and manifold assembly plate). If I had the notion, I could have replaced that resistor for less than a buck.... I don't know how I should feel about the dealer, their parts prices are _over_ MSRP and they sure try to screw you, but then the tech went way out of his way to make things right. He could have got into trouble with his boss, too. Moral of story: unless it is an expensive repair or you can live without a part for a long time, just fix it yourself or have a buddy do it for you. I hope to never go back to a dealer, ever. There is no way I was going to leave Mouse there, and then have everybody start crawling around inside, looking. John Davies Spokane WA

John, I appreciate the kind words. I use two cameras, a big Canon digital SLR and a compact Sony RX-100. These Badlands NP pictures look good because of the light. It was the middle the day, and the pictures would have been washed out if it had been blue skies and bright sun. The clouds softened the light and give good visual interest. When camping, I really enjoy sleeping in, snug in my warm bed. However, I sometimes force myself to get up right after dawn to go out and take pictures. The best light is at the beginning and the end of the day. The other thing I do is to shot my pictures in the RAW format instead of the camera's default JPG setting, and then "post-process" the pictures on the computer. More info on RAW in an earlier post HERE.

Greetings from Western NC, This past Monday my wife and I traveled from our home in Western NC to visit the Oliver manufacturing facility Tuesday, Jan 21. The trip was an easy drive of approx 450 miles to the OTT plant. We were able to see the Oliver’s that were completely finished as well as those in production. It was absolutely well worth it the time spent. Our sales person Anita Johnston spent most of the day with us and really did a great job answering all of our questions as we toured the plant and viewed Oliver trailers on site. Most importantly we never felt rushed or pressured to place and order which really was a plus. All of the staff including production manager Bill Pearce were really a pleasure to speak with. The attention to detail by plant employees was very impressive and really added to the wow factor. We learned a lot on this plant tour about superior fit and finish and most of all the pride taken by Oliver in hand crafting the finest travel trailer in the world. If you have not yet toured the Oliver manufacturing plant and are considering placing an order, we highly recommend taking the tour. Again a special thank you to “Topgun2” for encouraging us to do the plant tour and spending time with us showing us his Oliver! Post OTT plant tour we now are more informed before making our final decision. Happy Camping! David & Kathy Austin

Owning a travel trailer has been a life dream of mine, however my wife never felt the same way. I finally got her approval to visit a local stick built dealer in Nashville, and she nor I were at all impressed. After much coxing I was able to trick her on an Oliver tour. Needless to say, she was extremely impressed and wanted an Oliver LE2 immediately following our tour. We could not have been more blown away by the quality compared to the trailers we had toured previously. Granted it was about 3 times the price, but I figure it will last 6 times as long.

Anita has been helping a lot of people for a long time!

This is what we use. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GJHD3PD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Shortly after delivery of #381 it was discovered to have a defective window. Oliver service replaced it and removed and reinstalled all the other windows using butyl tape. Since they were seeing such good results with the butyl tape he also made sure that production removed the foam tape that came with the windows and installed butyl tape instead

You can clean and dry the inside of the connector and the wire attach points with alcohol and a soft brush (or use spray contact cleaner). Then seal up the cables where they enter the back of the cover with silicone sealer. If you keep the plug dangling down when not in use, it will stay relatively dry inside. John Davies Spokane WA

I know that WiFi Ranger does software updates. About three years ago I was camped in some commercial RV park and saw a notice for a software update on my WiFi Ranger. Without thinking I simply clicked on the update and went to bed. The next morning my WiFi Ranger would not work. Long story, short - when you see that message to not turn off your device while an update takes place - obey it! During the download, the campground's wifi connection was lost which caused a total software failure in the Ranger. Yes, I know that one would think that they would/could have prevented that, but they didn't. The good news is that with the great help of the Service guys at Oliver, WiFi Ranger replaced the unit under warranty. Bill

tl;dr - absolutely buy this, and depending on how you use your kitchen sink, maybe buy this. When we started looking at campers/trailers one of my requirements was that we should be able to go for a full week without refilling our water supply, using an estimated 7 gallons of water per day for both my wife and me, which included a daily shower for each of us. That was ~50 gallons, so we knew we couldn't get that with the Ollie, but were hoping that with some diligence and an extra 12 gallons carried in the truck that we could stretch a calculated 6 days into 7. That never happened, and of course we actually slid the other direction, getting more like 5 days - 3.5 from the trailer tank and another 1.5 from the extra water. I think if we really ran the tanks dry that we'd have gotten 6 full days but we never had a situation to really test that, mostly since we'd start to get nervous around the 20% mark and would go find water. Then last year I replaced the kitchen faucet, and the new one had an aerator that really had no flow restriction at all. It was rated at 2.5 gallons/minute vs 1.5 for the standard Delta faucet Oliver uses. And it also has a short little lever that made it hard to adjust to a small stream to save water. We could do it, but it was a pain. I realized last month though that the faucet would take a standard sized aerator, so I decided to buy a few to test them out. The ones I got were better, but made my cool kitchen faucet seem average, and I couldn't have that. But a little internet sleuthing led me to The Mikado. It restricts the flow to an amazing 0.35 gallons per minute and has the coolest spiral spray pattern you've ever seen. At only 0.35 gpm, I imagine you'd get pretty frustrated if you wanted to fill a glass of water; but we use bottled water and only use the kitchen faucet to do dishes and wash hands, so that low of a flow rate actually works out perfectly for us. We lost the ability to switch between two different sprays, but we never used that feature anyway. With that success, I decided to take on the shower. The highest rated low flow shower head I could find is the High Sierra. It's not a looker by any means - it's downright ugly. But it seemed like anyone who's ever rated shower heads has placed them at the top of their list, and it has a flow rate of only 1.5 gpm vs Oliver's 2.2, so I put my aesthetic sense to the side and ordered it. In its favor, it feels great in the hand - very heavy and solid, and it also has a trickle feature like the faucets Oliver used to use, which is great for keeping the water warm while sudsing up. Not in its favor is that I found it nearly impossible to connect to the hose from Oliver's faucet. I ended up having to order an oddball adapter and then modifying that to make it work. (It would have been easier just to have swapped out the entire faucet, which is what I'd recommend anyone else do.) But even with the adapter, it does slide back into the faucet just like the original, so apart from being a pain to make work, it does work just the same. But I have to say that this shower head is truly amazing. It has a surprisingly forceful stream that feels as if it's using twice as much water as before, if not more. It works so well that I didn't believe it was only using 1.5 gpm and had to test it myself - which made me even more surprised since I actually got a little less. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this really transformed the shower, and I highly recommend it to everyone, whether you're trying to save water or not. But it is ugly. After both of those mods, I thought I'd see if lowering the water pressure would make any difference, and found that 40 psi was about the point that I started to notice some drop off in the shower output. The sink stayed the same regardless what I set the pressure at. In fact it will actually run for a good while with the pump off, just from residual pressure in the pipes. So I've set both the pump and my external pressure regulator to 40 now, which I suppose helps my plumbing and maybe makes some dent in water usage though I doubt much. The result? 8 full days this past trip with both of us taking showers each day, split roughly 5/3 for the Ollie's tank and the extra gallons in the truck. So 2+ extra days of water while at the same time improving the quality of the water at both the sink and the shower and being able to lower the water pressure. Really A+ results. I don't know how often we'll actually need a full week's worth of water, but on this last trip it worked out well for us since only once were we someplace that we could actually hook up the trailer to a hose, which meant a lot fewer trips to get water. Also it means a little less stress and obsessing over water use, which is a good thing. By the way, the replacement aerator may work with the stock faucet, but I'm embarrassed to say that somehow I've lost mine* so I can't check. *Along with the sink. How do you lose a sink?

I'd guess that the tech knows the kind of place that he is working for and wanted to try to make things right. I'd also bet that this tech will not be working for these people for very long unless he has absolutely no other choice. Glad you got it fixed but sad that it cost you $50 to find out what you already knew. Bill