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Didn’t need them on the front or back just the two ends. No not dulled, I don’t have any cheap drills! I took the loaded basket to a large local lake area. There I found a guy who makes boat covers and such. He digitized the whole assembly and made the cover from heavyweight truckers tarp material. Any decent boat cover or convertible top maker can do this and will have the good material. I bought the large stainless snaps from McMaster-Carr. These included either an attached #8 or #10 (can’t remember right now) stainless stud. 14 evenly spaced all around so the cover wouldn’t flap or remove itself along an interstate. Also, more effort for the curious/thief to peek under.

This is very cool. It is in Aussie English, so he is a little hard to understand. At 5:00 he shows how to do an S maneuver, “sharp left, then sharp right” to get the back end pointing where he wants it. This is an excellent trick every Ollie owner should try to master, it works very well for making tight backing turns where you cannot pull far enough forward to straighten out the trailer. If nobody ever showed it to you, you might never know to try it. I use the maneuver often, and every single time I back “Mouse” into my driveway. Good stuff! The best advice is at the very end, 9:00. “Don’t drive beyond your own ability.” I would like to meet that instructor and shake his hand.... and play with his car toys. John Davies Spokane WA

We own a Tacoma and a Tundra. Love them both. I would not consider pulling our Elite II with the Tacoma. The Tundra is perfect. We traded in our 4Runner (we are devoted Toyota customers)--which has the same chassis as the Tacoma--for the Tundra when we knew we were getting the Ollie. At first, we thought that we wanted the Sequoia, but then realized that for much less money we could get what we needed--something to haul the Ollie, us two humans, our Pyrenees mix, and cargo--with a Tundra and camper shell. We told our local Toyota dealer that we wanted a used Tundra 5.7 4x4 in any color, as long as it was white. We are extremely happy with what we got. In our opinion, the Tundra is the perfect tow vehicle for the Ollie. We weighed our Oliver II mostly "fully loaded" at about 5600 lbs, right within Dave Phelps' 5000-to-6000 lbs range.

I just drilled 1/2 holes evenly spaced on the top rail/both sides of the basket. I then used a counter sink on both the inside and outside of each hole. Standard ratchet tie down hooks fit nicely with no extra hardware needed. I carry a 2000 watt Honda generator and a 5 gallon Septer fuel container. Both tightly tied down and locked in with a cable/lock arrangement. I also have 14 large stainless steel snaps evenly spaced all around the base for holding a custom fit truckers vinyl cover in place.

Looks great. Thanks. Still on the Easter egg hunt... Is it the bubble level on the gas tank? Sherry

When I picked up Ollie two years ago, I really did not know how to back up a trailer. Making things worse, putting our trailer into storage requires a 90 degree turn. This describes a backing up method called The Scoop or The Swoop, and it really helped me. The Swoop is much like John's S maneuver, “sharp left, then sharp right.” This diagram on The Swoop from this web site was also very helpful. [attachment file=Screen Shot 2018-08-21 at 12.26.16 PM.png]

View from the rear looking to the front. Rear of tank even with rear wheel goes forward to the door. Weight will increase slightly, little more tongue weight is good.

Here's the weigh ticket from my mostly-fully-loaded Ollie. I thought I had a full fresh water tank but it turned out to only be 2/3 full. Grey and black tanks were empty. That's with the whole family and dogs loaded in the car too, so I calculated tongue weight to be 620 lbs. (I have previously weighed the car empty) Since the fresh water tank is right over or a little aft of the axles I'd expect tongue weight to not increase with a full load of fresh water. As far as options we have that would effect weight, we have the 4x AGM batteries, 30 lb propane tanks, solar, two awnings, instant water heater (no 48 lbs of dead weight), and maybe the mattress upgrade adds some weight.

My initial TV was a 2012 Tacoma TRD Sport. It had a TRD supercharger. My Oliver weighed 5100lbs when I picked it up. I towed for about 6,000 miles with my Tacoma and it did fine. Uphills in the Ozarks were not a problem. I ended up trading it for a Ram 1500 for several reasons. The gas tank size made it necessary to stop for gas every 150 to 200 miles. The bed was not as big as a full size pickup and it was a trick fitting in the stuff we wanted to carry. Plus, it had well over 100K miles and I had the new truck itch. Mike