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We’re near Orofino, ID at The Pink House BLM campground. Leaving tomorrow (Sat.) away from the smoke that has been in this area for 2 days now. Great campground with full hookups for $18 ($9 for those with the senior pass). The Clearwater River is at the backside of the campground.

Just departed Bryce Canyon NP arrived Zion after a beautiful drive…. Safe travels and Cheers to all y’all road warriors! Best,, A & D (Magnus & Oscar, too — woof!)

Heck - at my age, I just enjoy waking up! 😇

Finally done! Worked on this every-other-day this week. Looks great, doesn't she?! Alternate days are for Pickleball. My body can only take one kind of daily trauma! 🤣 Days on the court cannot be combined with hours climbing under truck or trailer! How many times did I get down on the driveway, sitting on a milk crate, craning my neck to fit under the Oliver fenders. or lying down on the ground, and then climbing back up? Way too many times, no matter how well I plan having parts and tools required! UPS came early yesterday allowing me to finish with new E-Z Flex equalizers from eTrailer (2-day ship only $6.50 extra, adding another $316 to the grand total)! You should check your equalizers. Some may have upgraded leaf springs without the equalizers being removed and cleaned up for inspection (it's the right time to do it). Details on this and other concerns soon. Look for a new thread on this subject. All that's left now is to torque and grease the wet bolts (our son Adam will power the torque wrench under the trailer and the DeWalt power grease gun makes this easy). Mount wheels & tires and test drive. I'll tow some miles on local highways and hilly/winding roads, then retorque the U-bolts upon return. Park the Oliver to free up my driveway again. Another trip to Southwestern Colorado is just 3 weeks away!

Certainly not for the new retro 50’s style roll up privacy shades now in the 26 YM. Those shades are absolutely uglier than a mud duck!! 🤣 My bride nailed it when she said they are “ugly”. Just calling it as we see it. Just no beauty or seamless function with these new shades. Oliver just might want to go back to the drawing board on these shades. I sat in the 26 YM and studied the lower bars on the shade when rolled up as pictured. Both privacy shade bars actually loosely hit the interior window frame when the shade is rolled up. It will rattle and beat the black interior frame senseless when headed down the highway. 🤔 The valance gives a very retro dated look and removes the sano clean interior look we are accustomed to. On our current trip my bride and I have really enjoyed the cool air cross breeze we have experienced with our current sliding windows. Unfortunately this open window cross breeze goes away with these new awning windows. You may still get air flow with the Max Air fan on, but you totally loose the natural cross breeze for sure. Just my observations. Edit - take good care of your sliding windows! As mentioned earlier, Lippert no longer produces them!

Having had numerous conversations with Oliver personnel, I can assure you they are looking at every available source of consumer interest in the Oliver brand as well as the general RV customer trends. Nearly every change/upgrade that’s been made in the design package has been spurred by customer and owner suggestions and weighed against cost and benefit for customers and production costs. Streamlining overall brand quality is obviously part of the motivation as well. I’m very confident that cost cutting always comes lower on the list than quality and customer satisfaction. Some changes are unavoidable due to supplier issues, the new windows being the most recent example. One additional reason we can be so pleased with Oliver as a company as they make changes to the design is that they usually try to consider the ability to upgrade previous model years when possible, something other manufacturers couldn’t care less about. I doubt very many current owners will pursue very many of these possible upgrades but if we are in love with one or the other, at least it’s an option.

The LevelMate PRO is excellent for quickly leveling the trailer, and the battery is supposed to last six months. But I often forget to turn mine off and it always seems to be dead when I need it. In fact, it’s died so many times that I even kept extra batteries taped on the cover, quick release thumb knobs, and a screwdriver in my hook-up kit for changing the battery. Then on top of that, it has to be recalibrated for the slightest alignment changes when removed for battery replacement. I was fed up, and not willing to shell out another $150 for the USB powered LevelMate PRO+. So I spent $9 for a pack of ten voltage converters, and I hardwired the LevelMate to the trailer battery! The converters have an input voltage of up to 16VDC, and an output of 3.3vdc. They're small enough to mount inside the LevelMate case, the parasite drain is next to nothing, and the power switch will still remain operable. This is a simple modification requiring only basic electrical knowledge, some wire, a fuse, and a soldering iron! For the wire, I used an old charger cord. Hardware or auto parts stores will carry In-line fuses. Procedure: Open the LevelMate case and discard the battery Use a glob of silicon sealant to glue the converter on the LevelMate circuit board Drill appropriate sized hole for the power wire Verify the factory soldered a bridge across the Converters 3V3 pads to set output to 3.3vdc Solder jumper wire from converter GND to LevelMate battery pad marked “-” Solder jumper wire from converter VOUT to LevelMate battery pad marked “+” Solder Negative power wire to converter GND Solder Positive power wire to converter VIN Connect power wires to any negative and positive power source via a 2 amp fuse. My LevelMate is mounted in the garage space for optimum BlueTooth range close to the leveling switches. Power is available from the garage light, or you can pick it up from the “load side” of one of the breakers under the street side bed, or the dc power panel. Converter: https://a.co/d/7nvhv0A Note: This converter has a input of 4.5 to 16 vdc. Don’t be tempted by myriad of attractive looking 12vdc converters because they will not withstand the Oliver’s 14.5 vdc charging voltage. Now if I could only come up with ideas for the extra nine converters. . . Hope someone finds this useful! Cheers! Geoff

I would check out @rideadeuce Mike's post. He was able to fit a deeper sink, square bottomed, and improved faucet. Our OEM faucet leaks on and off at the junction of the extension hose, until I get under there again to seal it and someday replace it. Mike discusses the issues with the OEM faucet and sink design. It looks great, modern design, likely better quality stainless, a very good-looking upgrade! The down side is loosing the backside of your kitchen "junk drawer." It would be great if somebody found a better sink, slightly deeper and square bottomed, not requiring such under-counter surgery! 😎

At Chief Timothy Park site 7 near Clarkston Wa A 1980’s COE park on an island in the snake river (connected by causeway) now managed offline by Vista Outdoors under a lease next stop Hells Gate SP on the snake river About a month out from Alcan Springs appointment!

Me too, dawn is my favorite time with coffee in hand!

We love camping with our Ollie. Always wanted to improve Ollie's windows, too. On our previous camper we had Euro Style windows that could be opened up to about 70 or 80 degrees and had nice looking shade/screen assemblies. We really liked those windows because we could leave them open during a rain that is straight down. On the down side they were single pane plexiglass. Another issue that could happen with the Oliver is deflecting water above the window when open due to the hull angle, I don't know but have wondered about this issue if using different windows. With so many good ideas posted here, I'm sure from time to time Oliver looks at certain modifications/improvements. Before retirement one of my jobs was to answer warranty claims for industrial machine components we rebuilt or had built by other manufacturers for a fleet of 2200 machines. Sometimes it's difficult to see criticism of work your teams produced, but to be honest it was very helpful for us to improve and produce the best product we could. Here's a Euro style window similar to the window we had in a previous camper: https://aussietraveller.com.au/products/eurovision-window

Dead Indian Creek is right behind Twist and is full of cows and fish (see second pic). This campground is located right on the Chief Joseph Highway about 35 miles north of Cody, WY. Bill

Oliver just might have one left over - but - hurry to find one in that I understand that these sinks are difficult to come by. The main reason that Oliver changed windows is that the manufacturer has stopped making them. Therefore, they are no longer available. Bill

The exact one I bought is ‘Currently unavailable’ on AMZ, but this is one of several currently offered and appears to be much the same.

Regarding the induction cooktop, we installed a 36 inch five element cooktop in our house when we remodeled the kitchen a couple years ago. Holy cow that thing is absolutely awesome, even fun to use. Bonus was our wedding gift cookware set from 32 years earlier were already induction compatible. And as others have mentioned, since the ceramic top only sits about an eighth inch above the counter top, it’s just additional counter space. And talk about safe to use, spilled grease will never ignite on the cook surface and you can lay a sheet of paper against the base of a boiling pot of water with no chance of it igniting. And again as mentioned earlier no gas hazard or combustion fumes. Regarding the induction cooktop now offered in the Oliver, just the fact you will no longer need to open a window and turn on the vent fan to run the stove is enough for me to want one. Perhaps necessary if you are deep frying but otherwise no risk or need at all. With that said, I would never remove the remainder of our propane system because I like redundancy, and prefer gas heating hands down.

Bill, our halogen cooktop in the house finally went kaputt a couple years ago and we put in a five burner induction cooktop which works great. We did have to get new pans as we had copper clad Revereware from when we got married in 1976. The old pans went into the trailer. I do love the induction cooktop! It's incredibly fast and can be adjusted down or up instantly. John

This forum was started in 2008 and belongs to the Oliver Travel Trailer owners. Oliver Technologies Inc. provides the web platform for us but it’s not run by them. This forum is run by owner members that are volunteers. Some of the management at Oliver are members here but none post regularly. I personally have no idea how often, if ever, they actually sit down and study it. Decisions on model year changes are made in-house and not based on any official polls that I have ever seen. I’m sure that owners opinions and preferences play a part in the process but many times it boils down to product availability. For example, model year 2026’s window change was due to the old sliding windows falling out of style nationally and having been discontinued by most manufacturers. The same was true with the shift from LP/electric to all electric refrigerators. You can rest assured that Oliver will always strive to provide the best trailer on the market.

For sure, we're all different! 🤣 At home 6 years ago, I removed our electric induction cooktop (it was an older cooktop, perhaps not the latest technology), ran natural gas pipe to a new cooktop. Then I used the 8 AWG wire that was for the cooktop and added a sub-panel so that our fridge and Emeril Oven would have their own 20A circuits! It's been a great kitchen mod and we would never go back. So, quite the opposite from Rob's comment. We like the simplicity of gas, what you see is the heat applied. And when camping, we must have LP for outdoor cooking, and our fire ring for sure. The LP Atwood furnace is another must have, don't want heat pump running above our heads! We're going to keep those two 30# LP tanks in addition to more/better batteries! We prefer the stainless sinks too, but can see how this would make installation easier and costs lower for OTT. This thread seems like fantasy-land to me. Out of all of us reading and writing, who is in the market for a new Oliver anyway? Not us! There is only room in life for one Oliver, for sure. I'm truly glad we prefer what we already have with mods already made. It's like when OTT went to touch lights, nothing but problems. Our old switched lights, working now 10 years, and would not change a thing. Don't want those new windows either! 🤣

We’ve traveled from San Antonio up through NM, CO, UT, NV, CA, OR, and WA. We’re currently at Whidbey Island north of Seattle and we haven’t seen a single other Oliver in over a month! Where is everybody?!? Mike

AND - somehow that Oliver meets up with another Oliver just outside the town of Meeteetse, Wyoming!

Yesterday I left home, driving North out of Southwest Florida (aka The Swamp) and to my great surprise, only 90 minutes out, I spied an Oliver heading South on Rte 17 into Nocatee! Thanks for the smiles! A decent day’s drive, in spite of the weather and traffic. Only one pit stop. Northwest Georgia today, and the OTT Mothership tomorrow. I love my Oliver.

Here's another camping site just off the Chief Joseph Highway - and - this one's free. No water or electric or dump but there is a pit toilet and fire ring. Crandall Creek is at the bottom of the hill behind my Ollie and there are some nice fish in that creek. GPS - 44.848679, -109.639157 Bill p.s. note the last pic - there are times when the wind comes straight off those mountains in the distance and it can blow fairly hard.

Love the idea of induction cooktop for a litany of different reasons. As mentioned they are way more energy efficient. A few years ago we incorporated an induction range into our house after having a gas version for decades. Neither of us would ever go back to gas much preferring induction. The amount of control one has over the heating range is on orders of magnitude better and far more precise. It's nearly impossible to turn a gas cooktop down enough for slow simmers or any type of slow cooking too even with the use of diffusers, with induction it is a piece of cake to do this. As someone else mentioned it also provides addition work space when not using the burners, if you could actually call them that. There is no pollutants within the trailer either or our house for that matter, no issues with ignition at cold temps and high altitudes something we constantly encounter. Cutting to the chase I applaud Oliver for providing this feature! The only downside I can think of is the need for "possibly" more Li-ON battery and a large at least 2000 watt inverter, both which adds to the cost of admission for induction, but offset somewhat by fewer propane bottle refills. We look at gas cooktops propane or natural gas is a severely outdated technology, belonging in the 20th century dust bin.

While I did not have this specific discussion with the folks at Oliver - I doubt that Oliver is completely eliminating ALL propane from the 2026 models. I suspect that there will still be propane for use with things like the water heater, furnace, outdoor grills and firepits. Bill

A fellow Forum member and renowned fly fisherperson - Boudicca. Bill

A bit of an update on getting "older hull number plaques - We have investigated (with great help from Matt Duncan) using either one of the two sources that Oliver has used in the past for these plaques. Unfortunately, neither one of these companies is interested in producing limited numbers (i.e. one or two at a time) even if the small orders are combined with a larger order from Oliver. The good news is that apparently there are at least a couple of individuals that can produce these plaques at prices (including shipping) under $50.00 each. Matt is currently in the process of finding the original "artwork" that is in digital form and getting in house approvals for the use of this artwork so that it can be used by owners wishing to obtain these plaques for their Oliver. Hopefully we will have complete details within the next several weeks. Bill

We did the same. Grand Junction has a few nice restaurants. John

Guess we all have different cooking styles. We’ve had outdoor grills, and camp stoves and recently started using an induction plate outside and the magma pans and some cast iron are a go to for cooking outdoors.

Has anyone here ever actually found a clogged grease zerk? My Dewalt gun will exert 10K psi. The only times I experienced a failure to accept grease situation has been due to improper alignment of the holes in the wet bolt or too much pressure covering the hole from the tire. They should be installed with the exit hole pointing horizontal (parallel) to the ground. Never vertically (perpendicular) to the ground. The only way to determine their orientation is to remove the wet bolt.