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I like it, I wouldn't have to wax and polish my roof again. trainman

Looks like a spot to put lots and lots of solar! I’ll be watching this…. Mike

My install is similar to John’s. 2 BB 100aH with room for a third. After a lot of camping I’m not sure I need the third.

Cool, a party platform for ball games, races and star gazing? I hate working off a bunch of ladders, you need one of these .... Titan Auto Rotisserie I can't wait to see it finished. John Davies Spokane WA

We have spent the last two nights in our trailer and it has been very enjoyable. Picked up #905 on the 29th and stayed in the lot for a night and the second night out at the Merriwether Lewis State park to test out no hookups. Good results so far. Jason Lindsey has really helped us out. We have been in contact trying to make the big step since early 2019. We also had a great gal giving us the orientation on the trailer. Hannah was knowledgeable, very thorough,and just a real nice person to talk with. We really enjoyed the walk through with her. Thank you Oliver !!! It feel like just what I thought. A quality product easy to start our adventures in. All the Forum folks contributing info I truly thank you and will use you in the future. Sincerely. Tina and Mike Locker. Dream Girl is what I call our trailer and my Wife Tina !!!!!

Maybe or maybe not. I will be posting about the project under Ollie Modifications when complete.

Hello, Oliver owners (Ollies?, Oliverians?). My wife and I are pondering what will probably be our final RV purchase. We're approaching a somewhat early retirement in 2 years and thinking about what retirement RVing will look like for us. We're experienced campers, 22 years in a 26' stick and tin travel trailer, 30' Titanium 5th wheel, and currently 32' triple slide 5th wheel. Now considering the Elite 2. It would be the smallest RV we've ever owned. Anticipated usage would range from midweek jaunts to the local dry camping state park to cross-Rockies trips from our home in the Northeast to the Southwest. We're hoping a fiberglass RV will be superior quality to the typical stick builts we've seen. Our retirement RV goals: Best possible resale value, for when we're ready to settle down and buy a brick and mortar retirement house. Less time on the roof caulking 100' of seams. Comfortable for my wife to tow. (She did OK with our travel trailer, but wasn't comfortable with either 5th wheel.) Better fit and finish than we've seen in our 5th wheels. Good boondocking performance for 2-3 nights. Good cold weather performance to extend our camping season. Appropriately sturdy for long haul trips. Better fuel economy/potentiality smaller future tow vehicle. (Current truck is a gas dually pickup.) At least 10 year service life. Would love to hear how well current owners would rate your Olivers on those points. We do anticipate some challenges: Far, far less storage space than we're used to, inside and out. Moving from a fifth wheel will open up the truck bed, but we'll be back to storing stuff in bins and loading them into the truck before each trip. Our current rig has 2 big recliners we really enjoy. I'm 6' tall. Are the dinettes comfortable? The wet bath seems like a pain. Will miss the roof ladder. Although I don't enjoy being up there, the built in ladder does make repairs on the road easier. What say the experienced on this? Finally, a few specifics: Rear dinette vs twin beds: does the rear dinette convert into a comfortable bed, or is it lumpy with all the separate cushions? What kind of sheets fit that? Lithium batteries worth it, or AGM adequate? Street side awning worth it? How do you use a ladder with awnings on both sides? Does the winterizing inlet simply fill the fresh water tank with pink stuff, or does it feed antifreeze directly to the pump? Any other thoughts/suggestions? The Bigfoot 25' rear queen is also in the running. A lot more living/storage space but the quality doesn't seem as good and the boondocking capabilites are less refined. Airstream Bambi has come up as well, but I'm not a big fan of single axle towables. We're considering a factory tour next summer, with a possible purchase within the year after that. Nothing like hearing from those who've already been there, done that, though. Thanks for any replies. -Dudley

Update... I went out this morning hoping to find that the bracket was indeed a slot and that the shock could be loosened and pushed inboard a bit. No such luck. It is a hole, and its centerline is only 1/2" from the end of the bracket. There is no logical reason for this. The hole could easily have been another 3/8" inboard which would have allowed the rubber bushing to have 360 deg. contact with the bracket. It would only make sense that the hole was punched in the bracket prior to it being welded onto the subframe assembly. That being said, this is either a manufacturing defect or a poor design. Now that I have taken a closer look at the bushings I don't believe that they are over torqued. It doesn't help that they are deformed because they hang over the edge of the bracket, but the cracking is likely due to poor quality rubber than anything else.

Perhaps he’s headed in this direction…….

It's a good strategy, and you wouldn't have to remove the awning. Just add your support to the bracket like Oliver did with my rear ones. I'd originally asked them to do all the panels in a single raft like above, but Oliver was concerned about the height and how to attach the rear. I think they were limited in thinking that they had to start at the usual height. If they'd done them all off the awning mounts, but an inch and a half higher than they made the rear ones, then everything could have floated just a hair above the roof and would have looked pretty slick imo. Of course you'd want to hinge everything, for maintenance alone if not for solar gain. I can clean under the rear panels, but it's a pain. You'd want to hinge it in two or three sections though to make it manageable. I'd love to see someone do an install of just the narrow panels, like this - three per side -

If I were going to go Full Monty with solar panels, I would get rid of my curb side awning entirely and use four brackets there and four on the unused street side. And I would make the big frame pivot in either direction for roof access. I hope Minnesota Ollie uses the newer lightweight panels, if that is in fact what is going on here…. But I would probably just retain the two factory panels and install a Solar Tracker. John Davies Spokane WA

Looking good. Curious to see what your rear attachment is going to be.

Slight misunderstanding on my post. The threaded portion of the bolt is inside the vanity.

Here are some quick thoughts… As far as your RV goals go, the Oliver is a good match to all of them. As far the 10 year service life, an Oliver would be much more. Ours is going on 6 years, 60K+ miles and still looks and feels new. Challenges… you learn to minimize camping stuff. We can carry enough clothes for a couple months inside the Oliver. Chairs, grills, Clam, fire pit, etc. go in the truck bed. The wet bath seems like a pain to the un-initiated but it’s not. The dinette seats will not be anywhere near as comfortable as recliners. We sit outside as much as possible, camp chairs are more comfortable. We do use the dinette when the weather is cold or rainy and don’t have the Clam set up. Our twin beds serve as good reclining spots for reading as well. I’ve only been on a ladder to get to the roof once in all of our travels. I’ve never actually been “on” the roof. A collapsible ladder works fine, which I use after each trip to clean the roof. It stows easily in the truck bed. Specifics…. We have twin beds with mattresses and they are very comfortable. We had 4 AGM batteries for 5 years and I have no complaints. When they needed replacing I used two Battle Born 100aH batteries and they are working fine, too. How much money do you want to spend? We only have one awning and leaning a ladder against it has not been a problem. I did cut two pool noodles that wrap around the ladder to protect the trailer finish. I’ve never winterized or used that outlet to fill the fresh tank (different valve configurations for each operation). Hope this helps a little. You’ll get more input in the coming days! Mike

Picked up four gallons at Menards yesterday. They had plenty in two different flavors.

No problem, there’s plenty of room under the doghouse cover for one on each tank. I’ll take pics of my gauges on tanks first chance I get. This video gives a better explanation of how it works. https://youtu.be/_g38JponlN4

The instructions advise to “push down” on the gauge 4 or 5 times to prime the gas system, ie build up pressure and allow gas to flow. The gauge is mounted on a small piston pump.

I'll need to investigate further tomorrow morning. I just took a quick look under there to see how much they were compressed and if they were cracked. That is when I noticed that they were close to the edge of the bracket. I suspect that it is a slot because there is plenty of room inboard of the bracket, and why would they put the hole so close to the edge? Of course it could be that the bracket was manufactured with the hole too far outboard and no one noticed. We shall see.