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I built a truck bed bike rack that mounts to the truck bed side rails over the tri-fold rigid bed cover on my truck. When I remove the bikes, I loosen the bolts holding the rear cross rail and can either slide it forward or remove the rear cross rail completely to allow the cover to fold up for bed access. Since I took these pics I modified the rear cross rail with large threaded knobs to allow the bolts to be loosened by hand to remove the cross rail. The rail framing is T-slot aluminum extrusion from McMaster Carr, along with the brackets and hardware, and the bike fork mounts, wheel holders, and rear wheel trays are from Amazon. And this way it let’s us use the truck to still be able to take the bikes on side trips during the day away from the camper.

I completed the installation of the Houghton (RecPro) 13.5k BTU heat pump today. Pretty happy overall with the installation and beyond happy with the quietness of the Houghton versus the Dometic. A couple of notes - 1. The internal drain does not connect to the Houghton, so the condensate will drain down the roof. Not a huge deal, but it will leave some stains and the Oliver installed drain was a nice feature that I have lost. 2. The Houghton will not be connected to the Dometic CT thermostat - so you lose the Bluetooth feature of the CT. The Houghton does have a touchpad on the overhead plenum plus a remote. You can use the CT thermostat to control the gas fired furnace. 3. I modified the relay board to remove all of the AC power features including the large relay that used to be connected to the compressor on the Dometic A/C. This allowed me to mount the relay board in a much smaller box (Hammond 1591GSBK that I bought from Newark). I had to make some small modifications to the board itself, as well. I was able to velcro the relay box onto the side of the plenum attach bracket. 4. There will be two screw holes from the Dometic plenum that are not covered by the Houghton plenum. I used white screw caps to cover these holes. I did noise measurements again today and here are the results - Location, Baseline measurement, Low Fan, High Fan with compressor running (all measurements "A" weighted DB) Front dinette seat (phone on table) - Dometic 35, 68, 71 Houghton 29, 49, 58 Left bed (phone on bed at aft end) - Dometic 31, 70, 74 Houghton 28, 52, 63 Standing under A/C (phone held at 5') - Dometic 32, 76, 78 Houghton 28, 56, 66 Not sure why the baseline is so much quieter, other than I believe the hangar door was open when I was measuring the Dometic. It was closed today for the Houghton measurements. The Houghton has a medium fan speed as well and the measurements were about half way in between low and high fan. Having the compressor running makes little difference in the sound level. So, in summary, the Houghton is a great modification for our Ollie and I highly recommend it. I hope OTT will evaluate these units and provide them as an option for future buyers. Pros - much quieter, more efficient, heat pump versus cool only, 13.5k BTU versus 11k. Cons - a little pricey versus Dometic, no internal drain capability, doesn't work with wall mounted thermostat. Installation I would rate moderate difficulty. I would estimate 3-4 hours of shop labor if you have it done at a shop. If you have questions, feel free to send me a message! 7B246F9D-2130-4EDB-9E28-4B6AC3E7A81D.heic 3313E728-DA55-4EAE-A7FC-9EB592676E01.heic 872169D5-007A-4629-823D-458E0E10BFF4.heic

We installed our Houghton 2801 today, and it's just great. Love it. 1 hour and 45 minutes, dumping the old, and installing new. Really nice design, and easy install. Whisper quiet. Hardest part was getting the monster Dometic Dino unit off the roof. At least we had three people. Thanks again, katanapilot, for the heads up on availability of the Houghton, through RecPro.

We are avid bike riders. The 1 1/4 inch hitch receiver does not work for us. Our solution was to knock out the 1 1/4 inch insert. We then used a Dynafile to sand down the 2 inch tube so that it would accept a 2 inch hitch. So far, it works great. We will see how it holds up. The total cost was 2 bottles of Eagleton Whisky I gave my welder to do the work.

We have (2) Lifeline GPL-4CT 6V 220Ah AGMs in our 2018 Elite-I. This is what Oliver was using with the Solar option late in 2018. At the risk of tempting fate they've performed well so far, although its only been 2 years.

Yep - I just imported your pics, saved them in .jpeg and re-uploaded. No problem! Bill

How's this?

Check the O-ring seal on the clear plastic cup of the filter just before the pump inlet. If the O-ring is missing, or out of place or twisted, the pump will suck in air and run for a while after turning the faucet off. We had the same symptoms. The O-ring wasn’t properly seated in the groove, allowing air into the pump. And the water line between the fresh tank and the filter can also become clogged with plastic bits & shavings.

Hey there John, the vinegar purge worked out great, thanks! When hooked to city water ive now got good pressure in all areas. From the tank ...not so much... pump runs for a loooong time after the faucet is turned off. I’ve cleaned filter several times. Because we are on the road I hadn’t filled the tank, only had 35-50 % filled. I think I’ll fill it next stop, maybe the pump is sucking air out of the tank that I need to displace in order to get things back on an even keel.. thanks again for the vinegar idea! mark

Wanna trade? 🙂

Our Ollie (Elite-I) is in winter storage now, but last fall I scoped out the route of the pink BAS feed to help me understand what's what if I ever got to the point where I could install EOH disc brakes. On my Ollie the pink wire goes from the battery side of the 20A self-resetting breaker on the tow vehicle 12V charge line (street-side,, adjacent to the wheel well) into a bundle of split-loom protected wires. It exits the hull from the bottom of that bundle somewhere very close to there, and comes out right above the street-side end of the axle. From there (also covered by split-loom) it goes to the center of the trailer and then follows the hollowed-out path forward along the bottom of the hull, along-side the soft copper propane line to a point near the front of the fiberglass chassis. From this center-forward position the pink wire then heads street-side where it is butt-spliced to the "hot" pigtail on the breakaway switch.

Attached is a summary that I keep in my trailer. It has much of what is discussed above and may be a handy reference for the future. Timken Bearings and National Seals.docx As is apparent, much of my Oliver bearings and seal info is from John Davies. A great source of information and advice. Thank you John D! Geronimo John

@chuckstovall, don't feel bad. I wish I had a dollar for every post (on this forum and others) about the dometic thermostat. Makes me glad for our less sophisticated analog furnace thermostat, and button controls on the ac, in our 2008.

FYI, one disadvantage with Rock Tamers is that they do need to be close to the ground to work correctly, but when you are traveling briskly on a gravel road, they can drag when you encounter a dip, and shoot up a rooster tail of gravel onto your trailer. This is a non-issue with a Stone Stomper. John Davies Spokane WA

Jairon: I have been using Summit Racing for years, and also using Motion Ind. for bearings. I had not thought of Summit for the Timken Bearings. THANK YOU! GJ

GJ - From your question to FrankC I'm guessing that you do not have the Rock Tamers (yet). If that is the case you will note when you get them that you can cut them down to size via "guide" marks that are already in them. However, Be a bit careful to not cut them too short the first time - you can always go back and trim another inch or so off if you find them to be too long. This is what I did for my F-150. Bill

Sounds like you may be inadvertently turning the air conditioner fan on as you’re scrolling through thermostat settings. There are fan settings for low and high and “auto”. You want “auto” mode.

Here - plugged in to AC. Soon to spend its off season days here:

About the same time I started this thread I also contacted the Buffalo, WY Chamber of Commerce. Apparently there was a bit of a snafu in their office but once that was straightened out they sent me a very nice packet of information including information regarding local museums, camping, sightseeing, fishing and real maps. Having received this after I had already basically set my schedule I now wish I had allotted more time for visiting this area. Perhaps next year. Moral of the story is that if you have the time it just might be worth that email to a local Chamber of Commerce. Bill

We are planning to use sleeping bags on top of sleeping pads for our bed arrangement. In an Elite I, we don't think leaving the bed made up with sheets makes sense for us. We need all the space we can for cooking/eating and independent work projects. Sharing the small dinette table doesn't seem feasible. So we anticipate quickly packing away sleeping bags and pads every morning to have more usable space. Of course the Elite I does not have much storage room for such things, so I am thinking these will be stored in a bin in the back of the truck. What has your experience been? What has worked for you? Please share your thoughts and your experience. Thanks in advance! Carl

Here are a few floor dimensions and I believe they are still the same. I don’t have an answer to #3. This should give you a start.

And two for the celebration!! Good adjustment. Never seen the bottle capping system on spirits before - just my beer creations. Nice. I've toted bikes all over most of the USA - hanging off the rear of the Ollie. It can be a dirty, destructive environment. I moved my more expensive and "fragile" bike to under the topper shell of the truck - the more robust MTB's - fare fine in the muck of the Ollies contrails. I have threatened to make a waterproof cover that fits two and is easily installed and removed. However, it is on the list, the list, somewhere, on a list. RB Edit - I am sure the new Ollie design is fine for intended purposes, I firmly believe the old, original design, is much more robust., and pliant to my - not intended uses.

Yup, same here

Looking at similar discussions on other trailer forums like Airstream Airforum and the Escape forum it looks like the breakaway switch is not fused by other trailer manufacturers either. Whether it is a regulatory retirement issue or not isn’t clear but the industry practice seems to be no fuse on the trailer emergency breakaway power circuit. So I wouldn’t say this is an oversight by Oliver or a flaw. It looks like it was a risk assessment decision by the manufacturers, balancing the risk of fuse problems vs. the risk of electrical short in a mission critical emergency system. And based on discussions here and elsewhere, fuse problems (wrong value installed, fuse holder corrosion, etc.) seem far more common than dead shorts in wiring.

Bill, I don’t have any advice for this cool area of WY. But if you are a Longmire fan, this might be of interest, in mid August, no 2021 dates published yet. http://craigallenjohnson.com/longmire-days.htm Have you already fished the Wind River Mountains south of Lander? I know that area quite well but my knowledge is from 1974.... probably it is not of much use.😀 John Davies Spokane WA

Truth. Sadly, we learned this the hard way.