Leaderboard

For those who are not on the Fiberglass Rally Facebook page. Oliver camp shown both at the beginning and at end of the video.

Hello everyone; just a quick intro to say hello and to advise that I've joined the Oliver movement. I took delivery of a new-to-me Ollie LE last weekend; a barely-used 2022 model which the previous owner loaded up to the gills with all of the available bells and whistles. I was really fortunate to find it, and I demonstrated my interest by immediately flying to Florida from Texas two weekends ago to view it and subsequently "claim" it. I brought "Zuni" home last weekend, and now I'm going through the same growing pains as everyone else in trying to learn all of the on-board systems. So far, so good (other than that annoying water heater recall, for which parts are back-ordered for). I look forward to putting her on the road in another week, and I already have several long-haul trips planned for April and June. Stay safe, everyone!

JD, This is great thread for those with older trailers. I'm always amazed by the depth of knowledge by a number of members. Hoping our 2022 carries us for years to come, without having to do anything major. Anything electric is over my head🙃 Thanks for sharing all your mods. JD

I think yes. A single near full stroke on the shocks will not do harm or heat it up much. But if you are hammering away down an Alaska Corduroy road, repeated full or near full stroke range cycles will definitely heat up the shocks. Keep going than the seals will become suspect and you have dry shocks doing nothing but enjoying the ride. GJ

Thanks for this awesome post with pictures, JD! Although my installation is a little different it was very helpful, to me, to see that these batteries indeed fit into the battery tray. And thanks much to Scuba RX ,here at the "Q", with helping me remove the wiring rat nest in the battery cave....+ and - bus bars were so easy to install! I now have only 2 wires inside my battery cave! Pictures later after my DC to DC charger installation.......happy camper again! John

So, you have interior lights when the generator is connected, but no lights without the generator? If that's the case, I agree with @jd1923 that it sounds like your batteries are disconnected somehow. Could be a cable, cutoff switch, or 12v circuit breaker. More details needed.

Did you use a neutral grounding plug on your generator? Our EMS will usually but not always immediately block the generator from powering the trailer or charging the batteries. Not sure if your trailer has a built in EMS or not. If you provide a bit more info, such as hull number, battery type, solar present or not, the forum members might be able to give you more specific help. I hope you get this issue resolve quickly and it is something simple.

The Epoch Essentials 300 AH battery lists at $999 and several times a year it is 10% or 15% off. I got mine for $899 each, free shipping no sales tax.

Jay - Welcome to the Family! If you have not already been there it is in your best interest to become VERY familiar with the Oliver University - which can be found HERE. Being from TX it is a fair drive to get to Hohenwald, TN, but, if you can make it there and/or to the Annual Oliver Owner's Rally it would be time well spent. And, of course, there is the TX Owner's Rally that Mike mentions above. If there is anything that we can do for you - just ask! Bill

Ok. Lithium batteries. Do you have Lithionics batteries? If so, do you have the Lithionics app installed on your phone and linked to the batteries? If you do, what does the app say about your batteries' state of charge? No app? Our Lithionics batteries have power switches on them which glow steady blue when the batteries are on, turn off when the batteries are off, and can blink error codes. What do you see on your battery power buttons?

This would be a great owner lead topic at the Rally at Lake Guntersville!

We arrived Sunday night and immediately noticed a familiar face in Gary from Colorado! We met Gary at Lost Dutchman last November. We met Lance, also from Colorado, and his Hessie, who quickly became friends with our Charley. Later John and Wendy and there are a few others here that I had not known from this forum. Steve and Tali had to run an overnight to CA for a Starlink repair and after they returned yesterday we spent some quality time with Mr. Steve by our fire ring! If it wasn't for great people, this Dome Rock area is more the Casita class! 🤣 Our first morning somebody's car alarm went off 3 times, the first time it was still dark out. Minor generator noise late last night and a man screaming his lungs out to get them to turn it off. And the constant whine of I-40 a half mile away. Yesterday we looked for future boondocking locations, and found a great lunch spot along the way, at the north end of Q just west of Hwy 95. I strongly recommend the Meatloaf Sandwich!

If the new rubber is taller you must allow for that. You want the rubber to pillow out some to hold the mount tight. Overtightening will cause them to fail quickly. Also the used rubber will have been compressed for some time and will look smaller than when new.

X2 what John said! I love these friction hinges, they work wonderfully. I don’t have to use the latch = no pressure against that back stop. I can leave the door open when there is a breeze and the door stays where I put it and no more fly away door! 😊

This truly makes sense! Our door would bang in the wind against that stop before you even got a chance to hook the door. Never since adding friction hinges. You must add these. Our door sits 90 degrees open, even in the wind, and never pushing on the stop. https://a.co/d/d1kftGz

Ours has done this and we can recreate the issue, which is the door pressed into the black back stop puck. Even when using the door hook, constant wind pressure against that back stop has caused ours to crack on the inside, where the inset is hard and susceptible to cracking when under flex/pressure. Stand and push your door into the puck and you can see it flex. Thus when opening the door, if the wind grabs it causing good whack against the back stop, then the cracking begins. We bought our trailer used, and the door never closed smoothly or easily. There was a dent on the inside of the door, but we didn’t think that affected function. Turns out, that dent was probably something hard enough to bend the door frame and then, even when latched, there was play in the door allowing flex on the back stop, so here we are. We are ordering a new door from Oliver and having it installed. 2019 E2 hull #550

Maybe we should start a thread on managing resources while boondocking. When we had AGM’s we did a lot of no hook up camping, mostly at National Parks, COE and FS areas, Harvest Hosts and of course Quartzsite. No 30a hookup meant fridge on propane, hot water on propane, boil water on propane stovetop for pour over coffee, etc. The only electrical load on the batteries was the furnace fan, lights and water pump. We seldom use the inverter, an occasional minute or two of microwave and maybe a blow dry after a shower. Keeping an eye on where the battery charge was happened frequently. If we weren’t back to near 100% by mid-afternoon the generator came out (happened at Glacier and Grand Teton, some dark cold days!). Our AGM’s lasted 5 years and got replaced because two were starting to leak. Now with Lithiums (just 300ah) we still camp the same when boondocking and rarely get down to 80% charge by morning. It’s a mistake to think that solar allows the same kind of camping off grid as with FHU. Mike

Discharge down to 10 volts on a 12V AGM battery (it appears your two 6v batteries are wired in series, making the two of them operate as one 12V battery) is well below 50% of capacity, which is not good. A lead/acid battery (like an AGM), even a "deep cycle" one, should not be discharged below about 50% of capacity. Said another way, a fully charged 400Ah AGM battery only gives you about 200 Ah of usable power before it begins to sustain damage. The usual charge range for a 12V AGM battery is a high of about 13V when full charged down to a low of about 11V when fully discharged. As Topgun2 has advised, the fact that your batteries read only 10V when fully discharged and 12V (each one at 6V) when fully charged suggests they have been damaged by discharge too deeply, too many times. Also, I suspect your AGM battery system was not designed to operate 120V appliances through the inverter for hours at a time. If you want to be able to run 120V appliances (like the TV) off the inverter for hours at a time without shore power or a generator, you need a very high Ah lithium battery bank. Lithium batteries provide much more usable capacity per Ah than do AGMs. And, you may also need a more powerful inverter. The conversion from AGM to lithium is neither cheap nor easy, but many on this forum have done it. Below is one starting point for that journey.

Never discharge below 50%. 12.3 is a safe bottom number. It only takes one time to go below 50% to damage AGM batteries. They aren't forgiving. It doesn't mean they are toast. Fully charged then, remove them from the trailer and take them to a place that can conduct a load test. You have a lot of things going, fridge, furnace, inverter, television, and additional draws not mentioned. It doesn't take much for the deep dive.

Hello Steve Contrary to your post above, everything I've read indicates the part number for Bulldog replacements of the Monroe 555001 is HD1213-0656, not HD1214-0656. I put the specs for each as well as the Monroe OEM 555001 in the image below. The specs on the left are for the HD1214-0656 and the right frame is the 1213. If you compare it with the OEM Monroes (the bottom frame), the 1213 shocks line up much more closely than the 1214. My question is: is this just a simple mistake or is there a reason you were recommending the Bulldog HD1214-0656? I ask because I am about to change mine out on my 2018 LE2 (#344) and want a robust replacement.

Me too. Maybe the slides or installation were just better on some older hulls. Talk about hijacking a thread! I started this thread. The original purpose was (read the title again). This went from a comment on needing a battery strap to all this! We do have enough posts on drawer strap mods. I read the one from John E. Davies when I first joined the forum. Personally, I would replace the slides or remount them very slightly uphill vs. all that! 🤣 Back to the subject at hand. I did weave a simple strap through the openings on the battery tray and over the batteries. Not that they need to be held in place, as they're not going anywhere, just to reduce vibration. This strap should just stay in place for years.

You are correct. I changed @JWalmsley numbers.

Definitely not normal. I've never seen anything like that before. The doors are basically hollow - fiberglass exterior and that plastic (fiberglass?) on the inside. Our Oliver door has foam insulation inside. I assume you bought this trailer used? Can't tell from the photos, are the cracks pushed in, or pushed outward? Any damage to the outside of the door? The window with shade is aftermarket. Maybe the damage was caused by that installation? The door can be replaced if you wish. I probably would.