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Showing content with the highest reputation on 04/18/2025 in all areas
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8 points
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yes, the good news is Lithiums are a LOT lighter than the AGMs. But, at 57 pounds each, that’s 171 pounds for the 3. After reading about someone saying they felt like a “German Mechanic working on car” I came up with a Rube Goldberg solution. The original 4 AGMs were wired with no bus bars and no cut off switch. After seeing some sweet forum posts I decided to add the Blue Sea bus bars for Neg and POS, the 400 amp Blue Sea Fuse, and the Blue Sea Switch. (FYI, Blue Sea is very proud of their equipment and price it accordingly.) Using 4/0 welding cable, not the 4AWG from BatteryCablesUSAA.com that I ordered by accident, I realized it would be really hard to do this in the box. (By the way, BatteryCablesUSA not only refunded me for the wrong size cables I ordered, but helped me get the right ones, and 2 day shipped them in time to get them installed before putting the new Victron Multiplus in Monday.) See the pics below where I used the Loews what ever board, not the expensive board Oliver uses. thanks Forum. I wired the 3 Watt Cycle 280Ah, (not 300Ah, like it says on the label) on the table and made sure I had all the spacing right. Then disconcerted and put them on the board with the PVC pipe as rollers and hooked them up, Worked pretty well, except for the Blue Sea On/Off switch. It was almost too tall with the board and pvc rollers. (If you try this, use smaller pvc or a 1/2 inch board.) Good news is it’s all hooked up and good to go. Will update when the new Victron MP gets installed. I could not have even considered doing this if it had not been for the wonderful detailed posts other owner have posted and great responses to my questions. Oliver is a Great Trailer, and even better, because of the wonderful owners on the forum that support newbies like me. Thanks Gary5 points
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Hello All, My wife and I purchased Hull #1553 at the end of February. The trailer is a 2024, Legacy Elite II. We have already been on one trip with it. Love this trailer! Cant wait for the next trip. I have been browsing all the forums and am excited to be part of this community.3 points
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Be sure to check this very carefully - depending on exactly what happened (electrically speaking) many of these units actually sacrifice themselves (even partially) in order to do their jobs. You might want to check with the manufacturer of your EMS to see what they have to say on the subject. Good luck! Bill3 points
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We keep our trailer in a detached garage we built about 18 months ago. Prepping for summer, I had the Ollie plugged into a 20A outlet in the garage (with the Xantrex dialed down so it didn't overload the circuit). Last night I looked outside and the garage was dark, even though I had left a few lights on. I went over to investigate, smelled hot electronics and found a slew of weird electrical problems inside. Lights were flashing or going dim, something was humming, and the garage door motors were making bad noises. Realizing there was a major problem, I killed the master breakers in the garage sub panel and then the breakers covering the feed from the house distribution panel. Based on my smart home logs, the incident may have been going on for 2 hours before I noticed it. The electricians who originally wired the garage were here this morning. They discovered that the neutral line going to the garage was not clamped to its bus bar in the house. It was just sitting loose in the hole. This is called a loose or floating neutral and it can cause severe damage to electrical devices and potentially shocks or a building fire. Once that was fixed we started assessing the damage. Both garage door openers were damaged, as were 2 smart light fixtures and a Makita battery charger. I'm thinking, "the Oliver!" During the event I had noticed that there was no 120VAC inside the Oliver, even though it was connected to a live outlet. As far as I can tell now, the Oliver sustained no damage. All the 120VAC and 12VDC devices appear to be working as designed. It seems the EMS did what it was designed to do and isolated our trailer from the faulty shoreline power throughout the incident. We'll know for sure as soon as we get out camping. Amazingly, the wiring had been that way for over a year with no symptoms at all until last night. The electricians have accepted responsibility and are paying for all replacements and repairs to damaged equipment.2 points
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The Oliver is still a great camper BUT - you ain't no "newbie" no more! Bill2 points
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No it did not. I replaced the original Progressive Dynamics converter with the newer lithium-capable model... At some point in the future I will likely replace the PD converter with a Victron charger which can be programmed to match my Victron solar charge controller; I just need the time to find/manufacture a place to mount it. There's not a lot of room remaining under the seats in an Elite-1.2 points
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I just installed two Epoch 300aH Essential batteries in my LEII. @jd1923 let me know he ordered his from an authorized retailer called Renewable Outdoors and I did the same. They had the same price as the Epoch website and had very good communication and service. They simply process the order and the batteries are shipped direct from Epoch anyway. https://renewableoutdoors.com/products/epoch-batteries-12v-300ah-heated-bluetooth-lifepo4-battery-epoch-essentials So far, so good with mine. The batteries arrived in good shape in protective boxes at 55% SOC. They connected to the app easily. Agree that it's anoying to have to find them in the list of every bluetooth device in range but the app allows you to rename each battery so it's quicker to find them in the list. The app provides all the stats you could want. It's too soon to comment as I have yet to take a trip with them, but I'm excited to have 600aH and expect to have no power worries at all. As a side note, the list price as gone up by $200 to $1199 in the last few weeks. Not sure if this is related to the China tarif situation. It will be interesting to see what happens to lithium ion battery prices across all brands as 98% of all lithium batteries are made in China 😞2 points
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I have some comments about Truma.... all good. A couple of summers ago I had a propane leak. It's a long story. I was convinced it was the cooktop, but the only available SOB RV repair shop in North Dakota decided it was the Truma AquaGO, and since they weren't certified by Truma to "Repair" the Truma, and because the unit was under warranty, Truma shipped a new unit and it was installed by the SOB RV place within a few days. Truma gave me fantastic service in that event, getting the unit delivered very quickly. I imagine that they are overwhelmed with the number of units that need to be repaired or replaced with this recall, but my experience with their company is very good, and they worked with OTT service in the course of that event.2 points
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Interesting how Will Prowse pronounces "Epoch" batteries. Take another look at his video. He is NOT reviewing the less-expensive Epoch Essentials battery that most of us have purchased. He has issues with the software (only) of the high-end model with "Victron Comms" (don't remember the name of that model). From what I've read here, only @rideadeuce has purchased this model. He also is only talking about the recent firmware update. So perhaps Mike should not update the firmware on his batteries. Our Epoch Essentials batteries are perfect in every way I can see. I have used them for 9 months, have brought them under 20% SOC charge twice on the road, all without issue. I love them! 😂2 points
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Did you ever post a pic of the TIG welds? Seems a spot weld could be done without crimping, what think you?1 point
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Just curious why a new burner was even needed since it too had ends in need of crimping. Was there a reason the original burner could not be crimped and made use of?1 point
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Welcome to the forum and congrats on your new Oliver. Lots of great info on here as well as Oliver University. Safe Travels! 🇺🇸1 point
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So, what I'm about to suggest may return insults from the purists here... Of course, get your Blue Sky SC setup properly for LiFePO4 at the voltage settings spec'd by the battery manufacturer. The dozens of menus and buttons you have to push in this setup is truly tedious. I went through it all following the training video below. It took me 3 tries to get it right without making a mistake! 🤣 Given you're "not often plugged into shore power" you could forgo purchase of the PD charger upgrade, at least for a while (or longer). We got home from camping last week and I only plug in at home when over 90F and I need A/C. Batteries were 55% SOC and by the 3rd day they're back to 100% on the Blue Sky charger alone. The only true harm to LiFePO4 batteries by charging in lead acid mode on shore power is over-charging. So when you need to charge occasionally using the onboard PD charger, just turn it off when you get to 90% or so. Even 100% is OK if you turn it off just in time. Personally, I NEVER leave a charger on continuously (except a MPPT SC) or for more than 48 hours, "smart charger" configured correctly or not. I just don't trust algorithms nor programmers. If you're one that would forget it's connected, that's another thing! Learning Center – Sunforge LLC1 point
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Dang, I should have bought a 3rd one at $999 with 15% off! I'll stay with 600Ah then. Good to hear you're all set. Best wishes, JD1 point
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Hello from another HAM. I have used the existing "Furrion brand" Cable TV inlet ports, and added a third one, for an RJ45 pass through and for a 12 volt outlet. They can probably be drilled out to fit your SO239 connectors. This is detailed in my posts "Don’t cut your Starlink Cable! There’s a better way to install Starlink…" and "Starlink Mini, breaking the 12 volt barrier" There is a wide spot between the trailer walls on the street side attic next to the AC drain tube that you can fish wire into the attic. My other posts describe this too! Cheers Geoff1 point
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I tried Epoch CS a year ago when I was trying to figure out if two of the 460AH batteries would fit in the Oliver without the tray. They have the dimensions listed two ways on their site vs. the use manual. After finally getting to a person, he said he would "look for a tape measure!" 🤣 He never came back to the phone. The reseller I purchased from helped me with my question. Their CS is certainly questionable. I use the basic app, had not heard of a Pro version. The issues I have with their app is that it lists every Bluetooth device in our Oliver and nearby and it does not know which Bluetooth signal is its own batteries! I have to click on each battery, some cryptic string of letters and numbers and once it registers I go to the second page to see the battery stats. Once there everything works well. The Epoch app numbers are always a bit off from the Victron numbers, more conservative meaning lower SOCs, but I believe them to be more true than what Victron calculates as SOC. It's not user-friendly but good enough for my use.1 point
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I'm just finishing up a battery upgrade to a single Epoch "Essentials" 300Ah, to replace a pair of aging 6volt LifeLine AGM's. So far, so good. Connected to the battery via Bluetooth just fine, and was able to charge it on the bench with no issues. The standard Epoch app seems to work fine, although a tad confusing. It has a link for OTA (over the air) updates, which does nothing (not sure if the Essential batteries *can* be updated OTA...). There is a link for "Advanced" features that requires a mystery password (not sure if the Essential batteries *have* any advanced features that can be seen or user-modified). The only 3 real issues I have with the standard Epoch app are (1) there is no PIN to setup when you complete the Bluetooth pairing, so anyone can connect to your battery if you're not already connected, and (2) the app shows *EVERY* nearby Bluetooth device in the initial screen of available devices... not just the available Epoch devices. I have 2 screens of Bluetooth accessible LED party lights in my neighborhood LOL, and (3) the "Operation Manual" link in the app only shows the manuals for the Marine and Golf Cart batteries; nothing for the Essential series. There are currently 2 Epoch apps available - the regular app and the Pro app. The Essentials batteries use the regular app. I suspect most of the complaints about the app are related to the Pro app. Supposedly Epoch is working on merging the two apps into a single app, but I haven't seen any evidence of that yet. Customer service is indeed somewhat lacking. I've been able to reach them several times, though, with persistance (email + voicemail messages), and once in contact they have been helpful. Perhaps they are having "growing pains"? We're gearing up to head out on the road shortly, so I'll know more in a few weeks about how the Epoch 300Ah Essentials battery behaves under load, with Victron MPPT solar charging and Progressive Dynamics shorepower charging.1 point
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That's a big reason why I try to keep things as simple as possible and only own equipment that I can easily purchase parts for and service myself, even if not considered "the best" available. I don't say this to make anyone angry, but nothing Truma will ever be installed in my Ollie.1 point
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Basically I did the same thing several years ago by using a wall mounted file holder similar to THIS ONE. Bill & Nancy are certainly correct in that this holder greatly reduces clutter on the table and put travel documents all in one place. In addition, I always have a copy of my "medical file" in this right in the front. This is so that (if needed) it will be visible to anyone coming into the Ollie and easy to grab in the event of an emergency. Bill1 point
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You could certainly use one of those 2 CATV ports. They are quite easily accessible in the basement once you unscrew the covering flexible wall board. You could then drag a cable up into the attic space which also has AC power if needed. Craig *(Hull 505)1 point
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Cool! We’re in Winnsboro right now - just down the road from you. You may wanna check out Lake Bob Sandlin. A pretty nice place to camp!1 point
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