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We have always been surrounded by those types of risks. Texas City 1947 comes to mind. One of the largest non-nuclear man made explosions in history. And if you notice the location & date on my old hydrogen car newspaper article, that was just a few short months after the very close call at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant just a few miles away from that Penn State campus. Even gasoline has risks (get well soon Jay Leno). Safety was one of the big arguments made for many years against moving to self service gas stations. Having the untrained general public handle flammable liquid transfer into a car!!!! I’m always surprised there aren’t a lot more incidents, fires, explosions at gas stations with people smoking, etc.

Update: Mistakes, Canceled Order, and a Bullet Doing a little cleaning up in the shop and have an Oliver original-size dinette I am going to offer. The measurements are 28.125" deep and 24.25" wide. Additional matching microwave, pantry, and nightstand countertops can be made to match. Made from Mahogany & Maple strip dinette was ordered and the customer sadly had to cancel his trailer due to health issues. Price: $300 plus UPS shipping. PM me if you are interested. I can ship ASAP and should arrive by Christmas. Walnut Dinette SOLD Mahogany Dinette SOLD

I sent in a photo of our Oliver to play “Stump Matt the RV guy” The contest on YouTube was if Matt couldn’t identify your RV you win a spot on the wheel and extra spot if he doesn’t guess the year. Matt was clueless about the Oliver and the model year so I got 2 spots on the wheel. The wheel landed on my name and I won the grand prize!🎉😃 He was a bit of a sore loser and said “you can keep the Oliver”!! Indeed I will!😜 FullSizeRender.MOV IMG_9233.MOV

I am not at all surprised to see Toyota R&D looking at developing hydrogen fueled cars and trucks. Nothing in-depth in this article but hydrogen fuel research looks promising. A hydrogen powered V8 would have my attention. Initially I like the idea….Varoom Varoom! 😊 https://www.foxnews.com/auto/toyota-hydrogen-powered-pickup-suv

I just watched the video and saw your entry. Congrats! Matt was a little dismissive of the Oliver...and 2005? 2 years before Oliver even started producing travel trailers. But very exciting you won!

One of our camping friends sent us this today.

I finally got this project done. I ended up ordering a mattress from Tochta with dimensions of 78x75x10. When I put the mattress in the trailer and unpackaged it the actual dimensions we 78x77 which was too long. There was zero room around the top and bottom of the mattress. I called Tochta and they asked me to send pictures of the measurements. They got back to me and offered to give me $400 back if this mattress would work or to just have me donate this one and they would send me a new one. I chose a new one with dimensions of 76x74x10. It arrived less than a week later and fits perfectly. Mattress is very comfortable and Tochta's customer service is top notch! John

I just heard from Phil and our Hull# is 1368 with an April 12th delivery date. It appears Anita’s estimate is definitely in the ballpark.😉

Agree, we see very dangerous practices at gas stations. When I top off the fuel tank of my airplane at an airport without fuel services provided, safety precautions must be taken to prevent fires & explosions. It will be interesting to see the development of hydrogen powered vehicles.

That's very odd in that Anita is one of the very best there is. Bill

“Toyota is also exploring the simple burning of hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, which emits water vapor instead of carbon dioxide.” I always find the research into hydrogen powered vehicles to be interesting. I can speak from personal experience and background that getting an internal combustion engine to run on hydrogen does not take a huge amount of research (see attached photo from 1979 news article on my senior engineering project at Penn State, that’s a very young me second from right). Hydrogen is a great fuel for an internal combustion engine. That’s never been a problem. We converted a 1968 Dodge Dart with a slant 6 engine to run on hydrogen with some design and modifications to the existing carburetor on the car. And our research and work was based on previous efforts, so it wasn’t anything groundbreaking, even way back in 1979. The issue with hydrogen powered vehicles is that you can’t just go out and mine pure hydrogen anywhere here on earth. It always exists bound up with some other atom or molecule, with water (H2O) being the common example we all know of. It takes large amounts of energy to separate out the hydrogen, and it basically winds up being a break even equation. Because of that, it’s best to think of hydrogen as a way to change or transport energy from one form to another, not really a “free” energy source, but it is a very clean combustion process. The combustion byproduct on that old car was mostly just water vapor.

Well it took a few days but Josh just emailed me the VIN and Hull number of the Ollie-Haus which is #1373. Another step has been checked off and now to just get through the winter months. Woohoooo!

Nicely done and good for Tochta. Perhaps this proves that there are companies other than Oliver that do business the way it should be done. Bill

We are likely a really long way from seeing “greenie” hydrogen powered cars and trucks. We don’t even have an adequate modern electrical infrastructure for EVs. That said, I agree Bill the Hydrogen R&D is interesting for sure. In the mean time I will continue burning “Dinosaurs” aka fossil fuel. 😊 Patriot 🇺🇸

You can also go into the xantrax app and turn the charger ignition control to "auto on" which will effectively disable the charger. Doing this is also good for the health of your lithium batteries as they really don't like to sit on a float charge for extended periods. John

Hull 1337 has a delivery date of 9FEB2023 if that helps any!

Thankfully, with the supervision of our engineering professors keeping an eye on our project from a safety standpoint, we avoided any “blasts”🙂.

We all managed to keep our hair (except for our engineering prof 🙂). And the engine (and hydrogen flow) was shut off at that moment for the newspaper photo. Too many hands and faces in the engine compartment to take that risk (moving fan blades, belts, etc.).

'Fire! Fire! Fire!’ The Perplexing, Deadly Electric Bike Problem.  Malfunctioning lithium-ion batteries in the increasingly popular form of transportation have been linked to numerous explosions, blazes, and deaths—and little is being done to reduce the danger John Davies Spokane WA

I've seen a number of videos and articles on this topic. It makes me very nervous charging laptops and other lithium powered devices while not monitoring. We just take for granted that things will just work right always, and yet you hear more and more of garages and homes being destroyed by charging systems/batteries catching fire.

This aptly describes our experience with the Varioheat furnace in cold overnight temps, a few times at high altitudes, during our return journey to Idaho. With the door closed, the bathroom was nearly as warm as the main cabin, with main cabin temp at 68 F. Also, the street side plumbing areas got no colder than 27 degrees above outside ambient temperature. For example, when the outside overnight low was 9 degrees F, (with the main cabin temp at 68 F), the street side plumbing area next to the exterior faucet got no lower than 38 degrees F.

I asked when we paid our 50% the first of November. That’s when she estimated it would be 1361. She said they are assigned before building starts. 🤷‍♂️ I’m one for four on getting replies to emails since August, so I’ll just call if I need something.

From the furnace perspective, the bathroom vent into the basement does not effectively change much. BUT, from the bathroom's perspective, if the door is closed and the fan and window are also closed, as they would be during very cold outside conditions, then effectively the bathroom long small diameter duct will not be able to move much air into the nearly closed box (bathroom). I suspect that the new air passage from the bathroom to the basement has more to do with getting more air into the bathroom, thereby making business there more enjoyable during real cold conditions. That said, it also gives some air a path down the street side basement which may also help keep our pipes from getting frosty. GJ

John and Bill: Ditto on end of season disassembly and battery removal. Doing so and keeping the batteries inside a warmer location I think is good for the sensors and batteries. I believe that their battery life is dependent upon miles used, time in service, and temperature stored when not in use. In our case, we are averaging with zero battery failures 2+ seasons averaging 6800 miles per season. Would be interesting to know what your average battery use parameters are.

We saw a northern lite truck camper on the way today. If we were truck camper folks, that would def be my choice

Ran across this one. A bit in the gray zone... so to speak, but really funny. GJ VIDEO-2022-09-09-13-50-14.mp4

Thank you for sharing all of this info. No question there is a lot more involved then just snatching some one out of a ditch. If one is unsure let the professionals have at it.

A very sad story. Sometimes I think I over-prepare for emergencies on the road, but then I see a story like this. I’ve been carrying a Rhino tow strap and a Curt D-ring shackle for minor towing emergency recovery situations that may never come up (stuck in snow, etc.). Haven’t had any need to use them yet, but that article is an eye opener. And even with this stuff I carry (rated to about 10,000 lbs working load) there are situations that are still best left to a professional recovery service. Prayers for that family.

Very tragic indeed. This rather shook me up for a day or so when I first became aware of it. The incident and the news reports were shared on the Super Duty Tremor forum as many of us actively participate in recovery assistance with our trucks. Several mistakes were made and the consequences were devastating and life changing for many people. If you need to call for help in a situation you can't get out of, even if they are experienced, be in charge. It's your vehicle and your life that's at stake regardless of the level of experience of the good Samaritan. If it doesn't look right stop the process and reevaluate, you may not get a second chance.

Thank you for sharing. So tragic.

I agree, I was an A&P and thus did not have to fuel airplanes 😬 like the “ line boys” did. Have a BIG rolling fire extinguisher well back, connect the grounding cable between plane and tanker, touch the nozzle to a metal surface first. Pay attention! No chatting on your phone. Anything else besides NO smoking?? I never saw a fuel fire, but I did see an owner hand -prop an old Cherokee with the throttle wide open. He refused a jump start from a line boy. It bounced over the chocks, OVER the owner who was now flat on the ground, screamed across the ramp and rammed a brand new tied down Beech P-Baron near its left wing root. The Baron’s fuel tanks ruptured in a CLOUD of gasoline vapor. But it never lit off. The Cherokee owner was on his knees with his hands over his face saying “Oh shit oh shit oh shit….” I got to help put a new left wing assembly on it….. I never did hear who paid for it. John Davies Spokane WA

As the individual cells exploded out the back of the computer they were bouncing off the ceiling and small individual fires were already burning a desk, carpet and papers. Had to unplug the charger first and then hit the fires with the extinguisher. Let's just say that it was "interesting" for a few moments.😵

Two years ago my wife and I had a fire in our home office due to the failure of the battery in a laptop while being charged. Thankfully we were only 40 feet away when the individual cells began exploding out the back of the laptop and the fire only consumed about half the office. Buy and know how to use several extinguishers - we have ten of THIS TYPE all around the house and garage along with four LIKE THESE. Certainly they saved our home! Bill