Leaderboard

Then, your solution is probably better . Or, a small motorhome, class c, with bunks. Or a big, family tent. Our adult daughter has camped with us, many times over the last decade in a tent. I wouldn't be comfortable with a small child in a tent, personally, unless I were in the tent, too. The most important thing, honestly, is that you get the kids out into nature, camping. We're so happy that our daughter learned young, and enjoys it. You also have to look at enjoyment factor. Pitching tents nightly is a pita. Especially when it rains. Setting up, or packing up, in inclement weather is bad enough in a trailer, much less a tent. Our neighbors recently sold their rarely used class c. It was great when the kiddos were little. Now that three are on their own, youngest is 15, no longer using it much. Everything changes over time. Memories are priceless. Find something that works for your family, get out there, and teach the kiddos.

Everyone should experience I-10 through El Paso at least once. 😉

I have not posted in a while. My Oliver family has had me very busy in the shop. We are getting ready to go camping and then head to Greece for a 10-day vacation. I will be suspending my crafting for the month of August and will start back up the first week in September. I plan to ship all orders through August in the next week. New orders will begin shipping in mid-September. Below is my current challenge, a 35” x 22” x 1.4” Lagun tabletop in black walnut. While this sounds simple, the challenge is in the weight. Lagun Table Systems have a maximum weight of 50 pounds. It includes the top and any items you are going to place on it. My target weight of 15 pounds for the finished top leaves 35 pounds for day-to-day use. The walnut blank I started with 35” x 22” x 1.4” thick weighed in at 29 pounds. I decided to back cut the bottom in three sections down to ¾” thick, with 1” wide edges and two cross supports. It came in at 15.2 lbs. Beautiful to look at, light as can be, and engineered to be strong for a lifetime of use.

It's hard to believe that I'm finally sitting in my own Oliver as I write this. Picked up yesterday with a fantastic walkthrough with Hanna. I had a long checklist of things to go over and questions to ask. Hanna anticipated everything and really impressed me with her knowledge and attention to detail. I told myself that I wasn't going to be one of those people who has to run over to Tractor Supply to get the right hitch, but I was! LOL. After about 300 miles on highways, winding country lanes, rainstorms and potholes, I can say that everything is great. No problems. What can I say? Great company. Great product. In coming days I'll add some posts on some specific components and Hanna's answers to some of my questions that you'll all find interesting.

My mission for an Oliver is probably different from the normal demographic buying these units. My guess is the pending/recently retired group along with the Dual Income No Kids couples make up a big chunk of the owners. I’m looking for an RV that… keeps us together as a family unit for the next six ish years. allows us to comfortably push 750-1.5k miles to get to the destination (quick night stops along the way). allows the adults to relax outside with a beverage after the kids go down. facilitates me slipping out of the camper a few hours early to capture first light. In all of those situations I don’t want to be tripping over one of them or dealing with negotiations before or during the trip with who’s on the floor. I push hard on my time off and need a trailer that can keep up with my schedule.

Since I'm dealing with a number of messy issues with my new to me LE2, I wanted to shift my attention and share with y'all a couple recent mods that I'm proud of. Some were the genius of others on this forum that I copied and some are my own.

At the upper right of the screen click on your name. The menu will drop down and click on account settings. Then click on Signature and let your creative self take over. Mike

It's really beautiful, @Foy_Mirna. I'm sure your customer will be very pleased.

A few people have posted in the past about the temperature switch going out, so you might try bypassing it to see if that solves your problem. It's at the bottom right of this photo that I grabbed from another thread:

But it won't decrease the tongue weight as it applies to reaching your max cargo carrying capacity. It transfers part of the weight to the front axle, but the total tongue weight is the same.

Very nice indeed! We are getting greener by the day waiting for October but really enjoy living through pictures and stories like yours. Thanks for sharing.

Update: As far as I know, IL_Travelers and I are the only ones with this relatively new GM rear trailer camera. Service did a great job installing it but not through the hull as I had anticipated. They ran it from the rear curbside channel between the hull and frame, alongside the propane line. If anyone is considering getting a GM product as a two vehicle, I highly recommend getting the trailering package which includes the software for the rear camera. It functions very well because it not only shows what's behind but also what's along the sides (from cameras in the vehicle side mirrors), the blind spots, which takes a lot of the stress out of trailering.

Sometimes you just don't have the right tool. The standard floor plan- sleep two adults and a small child n rear- the dinette - the other. Otherwise any Rube Goldberg you devise will be more work than you will want. The Oliver - in my experience - will more than keep up with anything you can throw at it. We have done many 1000K days, stopped in a wally world, or other - and "camped" with all the comfort of home. A truck with a properly set up topper worked for us with the kids - the boys loved sleeping in their own place. When in the wilds - a tent was their choice of home. Your issue is not the Oliver - its the request to make it something its not - a 4 person sleeper - with the kitchen dinette area open most of the time - rainy days- ha. Wish you well. RB

PMG, you need to add your Hull number to a signature, and also tell us about your batteries, what brand - there have been a number of changes over time.They should never be left for a month with the batteries connected, at 35% charge IMHO, you should charge them before leaving the trailer, the % amount varies by manufacturer. If they are LifeBlue you should charge (or discharge) them to about 50% before disconnecting a negative (black) cable to isolate them. Or turn off the battery master switch, if you have one. You should have a phone app to monitor the health of the batteries, I don’t know if it tells you the overall picture, rather than what is going on in each one. A stand alone Battery Monitor like the excellent Victron Smart Shunt shows lots of great info, you might want to consider adding one. If you are leaving the trailer with the batteries connected, you need a tool that will show you those phantom loads, so you can catch them and hopefully turn them off, before the batteries get drained. For example, I am sitting in my easy chair in my living room, and I can read the battery status (all connected batteries) out in the garage, the -0.37 amp load reflects the Natures Head toilet fan and a couple of other little phantoms that I cannot figure out. If it gets below about 40% I run the charger to bring it up to 70% or so. They are Battle Borns, and they have different requirements than other brands. Alternately, you could get a small 30 to 50 watt solar panel, hook it up and let it keep the batteries “maintained”. It will keep up with those phantoms, but not overcharge the battery bank. If you have the composting toilet, then you need to be aware that disconnecting power kills its little vent fan, so you will need to add another power source for that, such as a small wall charger, or alternately empty it of its, uhmmmm, solid contents so they don’t get gross.The reason I leave my batteries connected is so I can power the toilet. John Davies Spokane WA

Thx ScubaRx we are New to the whole RV lifestyle- just picked up at the beginning of June so learning as we go in part tbh ! Yes we have the 630aH … charging will be through ahore power going forward. Didn’t have a connection to power where we had the Ollie over the 4 weeks. So as I understand it the best practice is to charge fully and then do a full “ disconnect “ of the batteries to avoid phantom drains ? Máiréad

All trailers have a "phantom" power drain. There are things that are "on" even if they are turned off. All the little idiot lights on the USB chargers and the radio for instance. Our trailer (Hull #050) has a phantom draw of about 0.5 amps. That means that every day about 12 amps of power disappear from the batteries. In our case, starting with batteries at 100%, 28 days with no power input x 12 amps a day would drain 336 amps from our battery bank. We have 3 x 100aH Lithium's. As you can see we would be dead dead long before 28 days were up. You state that yours started at 35%. What you don't say is the size of your battery bank (number of total aH). But even if you had Oliver's largest system (630aH) at 35% they would have only lasted (using our trailer as an example) 18 days. Luckily, your lithium batteries were not damaged by their lack of charging, AGM's would be a different story. How do you normally keep your batteries charged?

Thanks Mike. Appreciate the very quick response and sage advice Máiréad

I think you might feel cramped in an Oliver based on your stated mission. My son has a Forest River No Boundaries that has bunks for his 8 and 5 year olds. It gives each kid a space of their own plus a dinette table they all can sit at and a queen bed for mom and dad. As I sit in my Ollie tonight writing this and imagining two young children in here as well, I’m not sure I could do it. Not the quality of an Oliver, but probably more practical for a family. We spend as much time outside as possible either under the awning or in the Clam, but sometimes the weather has us inside and cabin fever sets in after a couple of days with just two people. I recommend finding an Oliver that you can see and be in before you make a decision. Mike

Definitely, don't use household toilet bowl cleaners. Dishwashing liquid is quite enough to clean the bowl, and use that sparingly. Toilet bowl cleaners like Lysol are very caustic. Dishwashing liquid is all I've ever used, in the camper, as a cleaning solution.

That hold-down design is only as strong as its weakest link. If you make the strap stronger, it might simply pull the lower screw out of the fiberglass. If in fact that is how it is secured, can somebody post a pic? You need to look at the whole setup, can you beef up the bottom where it attaches? Maybe put a full loop over the top and secure it on two sides? You could even go as far as installing a plastic covered steel cable with a turnbuckle…. but that is probably way overkill. I think the Mother Ship needs to get involved, because this does not appear to be an isolated occurrence. John Davies Spokane WA

Those type of straps don't break very easily under static tension. They fail when there is movement causing metal fatigue. If you were to bend that strap back and forth a few times where a hole is, it would break in pretty short order. Been there done that when I forgot tin snips. I don't have the Truma in my LE l, but if I did I would investigate the possibility of installing a nylon strap with a cinching mechanism to hold the unit firmly in place. I agree with @John E Davies about the screw. Just make certain that you don't use a longer screw (or drive one into another spot) because there is a water tank in there somewhere.

Ralph, I noticed the same issue on our 2021 LE II (Hull 760, also the Truma and also low miles). Our heater seems firmly in place so I'm going to wait until we get home and find a sturdier strap. But interesting that we're not the only ones. Scott Johnson

Here's our State of Charge data for the dual GTX 315's in our trailer (Hull 505) over a few days of boon-docking at Kalaloch on the WA Coast. NO Generator Use, No Shore Power. 340W Solar on Roof and 30A Zamp Controller On Board No direct fully sunny days Power Uses: Ran the max fan at night on low for air circulation and most of the afternoons Used the microwave sparingly to do some popcorn. Didn't do the Oven. Did NOT run AC as in our setup we have a 2000W inverter, not connected to the AC. Watched TV (we have a DC powered TV) each night for about 2 hours (streaming from downloads on the tablet.) Ran 2CPAPS all night for 8 hours. Did NOT run the generator nor hook up to any shore power. DATA: Starting AH: 630AH Total Capacity (both batteries) 8:00 AM Day 1 was 100% Partial Sun 6:40 AM Day 2 was 90% Rainy Day 6:13 AM Day 3 was 83% Rainy Day 8:27 AM Day 4 was 75% Departure Day Total Used AH: 154AH or 52AH/day Remaining AH: 236+240 = 476AH (sum of both batteries) I estimated with the dual 315A Batteries we could last 12 total days in overcast conditions like those we experienced with our normal power use model. My guess is if we had the 390AH Battery Set we could maybe last about 7 days. So that means the Dual 315's enable about 5 more days of off grid camping given our use model. *Your use model may be very different* We'll be testing full sun as we travel in Aug-October and we will post an update. Hope that data helps some folks!. Craig Hull 505 - Galway Girl

It's a 2020 GMC Sierra 1500 ATF with the 3.0 diesel. With the Ollie I'm averaging 16-17 mpg. Getting onto the highway with the Ollie 0-60 takes 14 secs. Mike in service installed the GM trailer camera which syncs to the truck dash screen for the "invisible trailer" option. Jason in service took my trailer wheels over the Hohenwald Tire last week and Justin installed the four GM TTPMS sensors. After getting the trailer I went over to his shop and he helped connect tghem to the truck software. The Ollie pulls so smoothly, incredible. No stress or fatigue for me as the driver.

You have been very, very busy! Nicely done! I especially like the shower head holder for the outside shower. Very useful.

On our 2021 we ordered the Lithionics batteries (3) with the internal heating system, the bluetooth connection for monitoring. We got the Lithium Pro Pkg (only one offered when we purchased) that has the 3000w inverter. We purchased the soft-start for the air conditioner. We haven't camped off grid except 1 night so far (only picked up 02.22.21) since I still work full time. We are planning a 2 week trip to Utah in September and hope to boondock the majority of the time. It may be overkill for now but upon retirement it will get plenty of use. Cindy