Leaderboard

There are four bolts associated with mounting the jacks. Two attach the mounting bracket to the jack tube. The other two attach the bracket to the trailer frame. Make sure all the are tightened down well. I believe all the bolts are carriage style so the nuts are easily tightened with no worries about the bolt spinning in the hole. The bracket to frame are accessible from underneath the trailer. The other two are accessed from under the bed.

Just returned from a trip up to the Seely-Swan River Valley and Flathead Valley here in Montana. Had a great trip, no problem getting campsites without RSVP's but each campground did fill up all but one night. We Kayaked 4 of the local lakes, rode our bikes on a 28 mile loop within Flathead Valley and did a few hikes in the area the most grueling being up to Strawberry Lake in the Flathead NF, steep switchbacks would be an understatement. Below are a few iPhone snapshots from the trip. Thanks for looking. Campsite at Harpers Lake Kayaking on Harpers Lake Hike to Morrell Falls kayaking Holland Lake View of Swan Lake Kayaking Swan Lake at the National Wildlife Refugee Strawberry Lake, Flathead NF Kayaking Echo Lake, Swan Range in the background

That is a valid point, if only 0.5% of the brackets pop off, the production department may consider that to be an acceptable failure rate. But in the end that argument is an excuse for speed and cost over quality. They make those compromises throughout the trailer… if they had anal ex-aircraft techs like me designing and building these, it would take two years, not two months, to make and nobody could afford to buy them. 😬 It is like the electric jack gearboxes that are incorrectly filled with grease when they are assembled in China by unskilled labor, the excess time and training needed to hand pack them properly would add too much cost…. It is the same exact principle as glueing down those brackets. But at some higher failure rate (warranty claims) it will become obvious that they need to switch methods. THAT is why owners should submit service tickets for small stuff that they fix themselves! I have been doing this for years. Usually nothing ever happens, except a “thanks for the information” but once it resulted in a major safety recall for a missing inverter ground cable. You never know…😳 John Davies Spokane WA

Did you use a torque wrench for the mount nuts? They should be 43 foot pounds as per Service Department recommendation. Hand tight with a small ratchet is not tight enough. Have a helper repeat that motion while you are inside, look and feel with your fingers for any movement at the head of the jack and where the bracket is attached to the side of the frame. Look for any signs of distress on the bracket itself, like a crack. It is possible that the jack or the hole in the hull is slightly mis-located (touching in one spot). If it all seems to be solid up top, you should file a service ticket. See what Oliver says, it could damage or crack the hull fiberglass if this continues for years. If they say it is trivial, just ignore it. It would require removing the jack and looking at the hull where it goes through, to see if there is a clearance issue… it might be something as simple as a small piece of debris wedged in the gap. While you are inside, check the three (3/16”?) Allen screws that hold the gearbox to the round shaft. Some owners have found them to be loose or entirely missing 😳. There should be no movement between those parts. Check all three jack heads! Good luck. https://olivertraveltrailers.com/forums/topic/6781-how-to-service-your-rear-electric-jacks/ John Davies Spokane WA

Please don’t count on the Oliver production or service teams to read your post. This forum is provided by Oliver and they host the server and provide the server support, but they do not participate and probably will not see your post. So the solution is to open a service request with the service department. This will provide a history of your problem for management to address. Remember, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" and none of these posts squeak, but a service request does. Mossey

We camped at State Forest State Park, Colorado a couple of weeks ago. It’s the largest state park in Colorado with multiple campgrounds and lots of dispersed sites. It’s just north of Rocky Mountain National Park and east of Steamboat Springs, so all the sites are at elevation. There is one campground that has 30a electric hookups, we didn’t see it so can’t comment. Our site was at 9,100’ and except for one night of torrential rain the weather was great, highs in the upper 70s and lows in the high 30s. All propane appliances worked as they should (furnace, hot water tank, cook top and Weber grill). State Forest State Park is in Routt National Forest. This is about 20 miles from our campsite. This is in Bockman campground. 9,100+ feet elevation. Dry camping but there were a couple of well maintained vault toilets. The Weber fired right up despite the elevation. Steaks in the Rockies can’t be beat. Orvis flannel required. This lake (can’t remember the name) was just a few miles from our site. There were a dozen or so camping sites around the lake, well spaced. I wish I would have done more research as they looked very nice. Still a little snow up there. Carol got good use of her flannel as well. Beats south Texas summer heat!!

Thanks, David. We’ve learned a lot about where to camp from others on the forum. We’ve been to some obscure camping locations based on other Oliver owners experiences so we’re always ready to reciprocate! Look forward to seeing you and Kathy at the next rally or before! Mike

Same thing happened to me. One block has fallen off...luckily I found the block. 2021 Elite 2. I will reattach with JB Weld and use JB Weld to secure the others. Hopefully Oliver will read this thread and address the quality issue.

Mike, Wow! You and Carol are living the dream! Thank you for your inspiration to travel and sharing your adventures. Your photos and write ups really have us dialed in on spending time in Colorado. Kathy and I love it that you actually post up while your camping! Keep the photos coming! We really enjoyed dinner at Crawmama’s and finally meeting you both at the last Rally. Those steaks look amazing! Keep up the posts! Safe Travels, David & Kathy

Dog Canyon campground, Guadalupe NP. 60 miles South of Carlsbad, NM, just barely over the border into Texas. Only 4 RV sites. No hookups but potable water and flush toilets nearby. The 4 RV sites are close together but the hiking, scenery and wildlife are wonderful and the peacefulness is great. I have been there three times now and two times was the ONLY camper in the whole campground for several days. A bit out of the way but worth it. https://www.nps.gov/gumo/planyourvisit/dog_canyon_campground.htm

I talked with Jason about this at the rally and suggested the factory switch to JB Weld or something different. He talked about the very dusty environment/lack of adequate preparation and the time expended between squirting some glue vs mixing epoxy. He told me he has brought this to the attention of production, but I think there is a somewhat delicate line between service and production. But whatever you do at least submit a ticket so Jason has more leverage behind him when getting something changed at production level. John

CRM, Your on point with keeping the window tracks clean. We clean the tracks every time we wash our Ollie after every trip. Its easy so why not? I have never used the pipe cleaners or had a need for them. We do have the rain gutters which I think do divert the water away as designed. We have been through some very hard all night torrential rain storms without any water issues. -Patriot

Love the pipe cleaner idea and will use that whenever we're traveling. Had some issues with occasional small leaks from the windows myself while stored, but after a good track cleaning, and adding a piece of Saran Wrap on the window that also overlaps the window track, I've had zero problems. I think the biggest issue with Ollie windows is that small debris can get past that small gap between the outside rubber seal and the glass that eventually builds up to the point that where it blocks the weep holes. For me, the Saran wrap has solved that issue. Might start using a piece of window film instead for a solution that lasts longer and is reusable.

Ridgway State Park, CO just a couple of weeks ago. Warm days but overnight lows around 50, good sleeping weather. Visited Ouray (30 minutes away) and Telluride (50 minutes away). There are several campgrounds in the park, FHU to no HU, depends on what you want. Ouray Main Street. Telluride.

I finished installing mud flaps on our 2021 LE2 today. The street side mud flap does not clear the basement door, as on JED's trailer, but the door does open fully when the upper part of the flap is bent forward a bit. That's not a big deal, but I do wonder what the difference is between our trailers. The 1"x2" aluminum tubing I used is attached to the forward part of the lateral angle that is part of the sub-frame, and the flap is attached to the front of the aluminum support as in the photos of other installations. I suspect that the lateral angle piece is welded to the sub-frame further to the rear of the trailer, rather than there being a difference in the size of the basement door opening. I added plugs to the exposed ends of the aluminum supports to give a more finished appearance. I bought them on Amazon (where else?). https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CNCCR7S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Hello fellow owners. Thought I'd put up some pics of our tow vehicle. Our truck is an old school GMC 3500 hand shaker 4x4. We picked up our trailer April first of this year and have rolled around 15000km since. We are taking a 2 week break at base camp before we head of to Northern Michigan site a Superior Lake tour. Thought people would like to see pics of the rig.

I'd be interest in your research: It would seem to me (and I'm certainly no mechanical engineer) the function of the refrigeration process which causes heat to build up in the refrigerant during the cooling process , occurs regardless of which energy source you're using to drive it. (otherwise, no cold air). The ARP product apparently protects the system by shutting it down before it gets to a critical temperature which will cause catastrophic damage to the hardware. Most issues apparently are caused by the gases and liquids within the system requiring the units to be fairly level so liquid levels can remain within operating design parameters. (This is my understanding anyway.) If there is something I'm missing, would love to learn more about it. Thanks

The fans are not weather proof as far as I know. However, I have not seen a significant amount of water entering through the frig vents while traveling in rainy weather. When washing the trailer I try to be careful with hose and not direct water upward into the vents. When installing upper fan I used 20 gauge wire to extend the leads off the ARP module to the fan. Yes, when sitting under the awning the fans can be heard occasionally. More so on very hot days. Not too annoying though. There are 2 temperature sensors. One is mounted against one of the horizontal tubes that zig zag on rear of refrigerator and the other is behind the heat shield on I guess what you would call the boiler tube. The instructions are very specific where to mount probes on the tubes. Especially the boiler tube. Have had the system for a year now with zero issues. After installation, there is nothing else that needs to be done. Comes on automatically when refrigerator is powered up.

Got it -- thanks again! For others, and for the sake of mudflap-thread completeness, the relevant pic (I think) from John's Stone Stomper thread is attached below. Well-reasoned and thorough, as always.

Issue I had, when leaving it open when traveling, is the foam gasket came loose a couple of times. I keep mine closed now only for that reason.

Will be doing a repair as well....Oliver Charged me for the new block for our 2019. Thanks for the articles in the thread which will help me prepare the surface for a good mount. Attaching with wires to make sure they don't fully fall off is a great add. CS Hull 505 - 2019 EII

They do have a really large rain simulator or giant Ollie wash/wet weather booth. We saw it during our factory tour in Jan of 2020. I don’t know if they had this back in 2017, If I had to guess I would say they surely must have. I can’t imagine that this critical and very important step would be by bypassed in production by Oliver regardless of the pace of production.

We’ve done highway 550 twice now from Montrose to Durango, towing. The first time was in mid-September and we had snow and/or rain at the higher elevations. It is exhilarating and beautiful at the same time. Many areas with no guardrail on the outside with a sheer drop off. We plan on going back next summer. The heat in south Texas is getting more undesirable every year and the cool mountain evenings and mornings are so pleasant. Mike

@Spike I know you have great faith in your RV service tech and I assume it’s the same tech that installed your solar and battery upgrade, so you should be confident in the work he has completed for you. But I also remember that he didn’t get everything right the first time, although he did get it right in the end with some help from the forum members. And he may have replaced an Oliver window before, but I doubt it. So just to be fair, I think it would be prudent to ask the folks at Oliver, who built your trailer about your water leak as they might have some inside knowledge about window installations in Oliver’s. Mossey These 2 links contain information on the subject of water leaks in the window area. The first link is provided by the Oliver Service team. The second link start out with my experience’s with a window leak, but others contributed their own. https://support.olivertraveltrailers.com/portal/en/kb/articles/window-maintenance

We have left our awning seal installed for same reasons. It rains often in the Southeast, daily this time of year. My trailer has drain channels in the awning brackets, so not too much stuff collects up there. I get up top periodically to clean the solar panels anyway, so no problem cleaning the ditch created by the awning. The new J-channel strip Oliver is using now looks like it might be an improvement. I look forward to reading some feedback on how well it works.

Well, we haven't seen a rash of comments on this, so my "guess" is a one off issue. For which I am sorry, but, I do believe its an unusual situation. I'd open a service ticket, were it me. Photos would help. Leaks five years in could be difficult to trace. Spike's trailer is a 2017.

I'm with you If and when our old seal dies, we'll replace it with same. In the east, we often can leave our manual awnings out, pitched, and get a nice patio in soft rains and our typically lighter winds. I'm on the "porch " now. Soft rain. No wind. It's pretty sweet.. All our trailers live big,, on the outside.

It's apparent there are two 'camps' of opinion on removing the awning seal. I, for one, make a living space out of the shade and invariably it will rain when I camp, so keeping that area dry is a high priority. I really like to keep runoff to a minimum and have found the seal to be pretty darn effective! Today, I replaced my deteriorated and flaking seal with a new 1" slide out seal. The leftover adhesive from the old was pretty easy to remove with 'Spray Nine' a cloth and a plastic razor blade. No heavy duty removers needed. It took maybe 30 minutes. My take is that you may have to replace it every five years or so, and I'm ok with that. Here's to DRY camping!

Looks fabulous and I love the town, so cute!

Here’s our experience. We visited Oliver last week and they had a new side window sitting out assuming ready for installation with grey tape around the window perimeter where the window frame flange contacts the outer hull. It looked like butyl tape. We have had leakage issues with the rear Oliver sign and a porch light above the windows with water traveling between the hulls leaking out of the the windows on our #75 LE2. These leaks were not window issues. Once we resealed the Oliver sign and porch light, that fixed the leaks. I would discuss this with Jason.

Ouray is such a cool little town. (Except for the cottonwood, and the stickers attaching to the dogs' paws. We found hand sanitizer and facial wipes helped to soften them.) As I recall, the ridgeway park cg was closed still, when we were there, so we stayed in town at the 4j+1+1 cg. We had deer on the hill behind us every night. Walkable to a lot of stuff, but still very quiet. (And, a good laundry center in the park.) Are the swings still there at the brewery? First place I was ever served a can of wine. It was surprisingly decent. Not us on the swings... I don't have a photo of that.

Dusk in the San Juan National Forest in Colorado last week. The string of lights are Jackery Camping Lights on low. They are 2.5 watts. Charlie.

Camped at Cumberland Mountain State Park TN twice this week during the trip to Oliver. This campground is in the plateau region in Crossville TN.

That is a unique TV! Happy travels - Mike

We’ll be there from July 1-10, and nearly at Lake Powhatan June 16-19th. It is such a beautiful area, and has been our go-to for camping for over 30 years.

Camped last week at Mount Pisgah Campground on the Blue Ridge Parkway NC. It was low 50s there last few mornings and very nice!

I’ve still got my blocks. It hasn’t appeared on the forum from many folks so it is probably a random problem. Maybe bad batch of glue or incorrect glueing technique or something else. It’s important that it’s reported so they can refine their procedures.

Seems to be a random problem over the years. Our 2019 still has all blocks intact. Since Oliver chooses to use adhesive to mount those blocks, surface prep is critical, making sure both surfaces are clean and free of wax, dirt, grease, oil, mold release, etc. before applying the adhesive, so it’s very human-dependent. And Oliver may occasionally have an employee that isn’t as careful with the preparation step.

It has happed from time to time in the past but I would not call it very often. Since you have already received a replacement from Oliver Service, they are now aware of your issue and a few others that have had the same problem in the recent past. They will process this information and take steps to either correct installation procedures and/or material components if it is found to be a often recurring issue. Bill

Tonight we’re at another COE campground in Mississippi near Starkville, just outside of Columbus AFB. We picked it at random due to location but are pleasantly surprised. It’s a very nice campground and we have FHU (not that we need that for one night). We’re only about 170 miles from Lake Guntersville and the rally, so we will have a short drive tomorrow. Nostalgia - 60 years ago we lived here in Starkville where I went to 2nd and 3rd grade while my dad went to Mississippi State University.

We continued our meander across Texas today for another one night stand just outside of Texarkana. We’re at Piney Point COE campground on Wright Patman lake. We’ve camped at this lake several times before at Clear Springs COE campground not too far from here (see page 9 of this thread). I’d say Clear Springs COE is a bit nicer and is much larger. It has a lot FHU sites if that’s what you need. This campground is smaller. Lots of tall pine trees, not like Texas Hill Country at all.

Boondocking in the only non-electric space in the Quail section of Dead Horse Ranch State Park (AZ). We just fit as the height restriction was 10' for RVs shorter than 30'. BTW, there was one more Ollie II staying in this section of the park - from Colorado.

Roper Lake State Park. Safford,AZ

This is the parking lot for Horseshoe Bend just outside of Page, AZ. I have a collection of Carol holding our Oliver in the palm of her hand at various spots around the nation! A nice fellow tourist offered to take our picture. It’s worth the stop and 15 minute walk to see this. It was a bit cool but pretty spectacular.

Sunrise at Dead Horse Ranch State Park just south of Sedona in the town of Cottonwood. Just 20 minutes from Sedona. This is Red Rock State Park a few miles north of Dead Horse Ranch State Park. No camping here but some nice hiking. We hiked to the top of the “hill” behind me for some great views. Dead Horse Ranch State Park.

What a surprise to find four other Ollies at our favorite AZ State Park the day after we arrived. Great to meet new Ollie owners and reconnect with some we met last year, before we had our Ollie. Ollie owners are really nice people.

Oliver in Wild - We spent 5 nights here - https://riversedgemountainrvresort.com and did a little exploring around Nantahala National Forest, Vogel State Park, Blairsville, and Brasstown Bald. Rib Country is now are most favorite barbecue joints in Murphy…awesome cue!! We were camping among the giant RVs.😄 Lots of large motorhomes and big 5th wheels. The RV park was extremely clean and well kept and had large concrete pad sites. We met a number of super nice people during our stay. We took our bicycles in order to do a shake down of our 1Up USA (2) bike rack. We loved having our bicycles with us, it was just great to pedal tour around the park. The 1Up USA Super Duty bike rack performed excellent with no issues during our trip. The license plate relocation bracket arrived while we were gone so I installed it when we got home. I may add an LED license plate light. A few pics of our site, bike rack and views along the way. Bike rack loaded without the license plate relocation kit. Plenty of tail light visibility but needed the license plate relocation bracket. Bike rack deployed- Rack in upright store position- Our site - Looking from Nantahala National Forest up towards the Smoky Mtns. Already missing the higher elevations of the mountains -

Our Oliver LE2 is stored in along side our house and is subject to rain, oak leaves, pine needles, bugs and whatever else Mother Nature throws at it in Lutz, FL. It is a constant struggle to keep it clean and off-site storage is very expensive. And until the finance department approves a storage solution, I’ll just have to try to keep up with the maintenance. Florida is called the Sunshine State but we also receive a fair amount of rain. After a 5” rain one day this summer, we found the curbside bench cushions to be wet. I found some ideas about the cause of the leakage in the Oliver forums and determined that cause of the leak was dirt and crud blocking the weep slots. ScubaRx/Steve offered some detailed thoughts about cleaning the window tracks which included the weep slots. So I tackled that project which included removing the window seals covering the fixed glass track. Then removing the sliding window track seal and finally removing the screen and it’s seal. With those items removed I was able to clean the tracks pretty well. I have attached a poor picture of the 3 tracks of the window frame and the weep slots. And in an effort to be clear, the picture does not show the slots very well. The weep slots are between the outside of the window frame and the fixed glass track and between the fixed glass track and the sliding glass track. There aren’t any weep slots to the screen track. So if the weep slots become clogged, the water overflows into the sliding glass track and the overflow runs down the inside wall. This can happen to any of the windows except the door window. The Norton’s had told me about draining the the window tracks by placing a finger at the bottom of the weep slot and creating a capillary effect to drain the window tracks. The window weep slots must be fairly clean for this to work. It’s very effective if you are around your Oliver when it rains. And now my helpful tip. I cut pipe cleaners in half and place one in each weep slot. The slots between the outside and middle tracks line up, so push the pipe cleaners through the outside track and into the middle track. It requires about an 1-1/4” of the pipe cleaner to reach the middle track. I find that the tracks dry out much faster with the pipe cleaners than without. The pipe cleaners also travel pretty well as we didn’t lose any on our last camping trip which included some interstate driving. We hope this proves useful for someone.

We have early style porch lights, not sure if this would apply to later style porch lights. Water was coming in from the porch light between shells dripping from the top of the dinette window. When we resealed the porch light over the window, fixed the problem. Saw another leak from the rear Oliver sign, leaking between shells traveling around the rear window and dripping from the bottom of the window on the curbside bed. Once we found the leaks, fixed them without further problems.

Missing pictures from original posting. I hope?