STEVEnBETTY
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Posts posted by STEVEnBETTY
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Hello, If you contact Oliver directly they will do the search for an owner for you!
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Mark – I’ve had zero (that I know of) stripped screws in my Oliver (hull #117). Certainly I realize that Hohenwald is a long way from Montana, but, I really do think that a visit to the factory would go a long way towards mitigating any doubts that you seem to be voicing here. Bill
Ditto!
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If you go way back on the forum posts another owner had temp probes inside the trailer and in between the hulls, if I remember correctly there was only a 10? degree temp difference between the hulls. On the twin bed model there is a vent below the street side bed, it looks like a register in your house, it's not hooked up to anything. When it's cold just open that vent and warm air from the cabin should circulate in between the hulls.
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So regarding draining the outside shower hose. Since there are no inline shutoffs in the hot/cold pex lines that feed the ext. shower, I assume that “by draining the outside shower hose”, one is just letting the chromed flex line drain by gravity and that’s it? It would be nice if all those water lines in the back corner of the trailer could be drained when needed as this is probably the most vulnerable area in freezing weather. The brass backflow valves are at particular risk. I know because one of mine was busted open when we picked up our rig in late March. It had been out in the weather for a month or two before we could get out to pick it up. Luckily, the leak showed up right away during our shakedown at Fall Hollow, and was replaced. Dave
IMHO draining the chrome flex line by gravity should be sufficient, as the hose is the only external part, everything else is inside.
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Mark, the two owners you mention have, at times, been very critical of their purchase causing some potential buyers to look elsewhere. You may join that group. If you’ve read through some of those threads you should have noticed a response from the Oliver company and also a number of owners that expressed satisfaction with their trailer and the company. As far as regrets, I believe the Lukens are the only owners expressing regrets on their purchase. There is also no shortage of owners who are very happy and will go on record saying so. I recommend you contact Reed and John directly to get their views. They have both been extremely helpful on this forum and also personally helpful with other owners. They will give honest views and assessments. This will probably need to be moved to a new thread so this one can stay on topic. I expect there may be a number of replies to this. Mike
What he said!!! I have hull #219, the one right after John's and have not experienced anything near what him or Reed have talked about, they're trailers must have been built on a "Friday". My attempt at humor, but seriously these are well built trailers that are assembled by humans, are they " perfect", no but Oliver will definitely try to make it so!
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If I choose to winter camp and use the propane heater to heat the trailer which is not winterized how do I keep the outside shower from freezing at night?
As long as there is no water in the hose between the valve,( which is inside the trailer) and the shower nozzle, you should be ok. If you use the outside shower make sure you drain that line.
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"The difference between men and boys is the price........." nice man cave, looks like you have plenty of hobbies!
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Sorry, here's the other picture.
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Here's the pictures of the ground wire I ran for my front jack, the wire is an 8 ga multi strand. [attachment file=IMG_0473.JPG]
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Try running an additional ground wire from the frame to the base of the jack, we had a similar problem, while operating the jack I heard a popping sound ( it sounded like an electrical arc), the jack quit working but the courtesy light still came on, both fuses were good, turn out to be insufficient ground.
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Alex, congratulations on your purchase and welcome to the "family". I second Reeds recommendation on the inverter, ac power when you're boondocking can be very handy.
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Hi Alex, welcome! In my opinion the standard hot water heater is fine, it's simple, straight forward, and it works! We've never run out of hot water ( especially when boondocking) and if it breaks parts are readily available.
The zamp solar is Oliver's system of choice, if you read back through prior posts you'll find that the owners with the blue sky system are happy with it,but it can be very complicated to set up and operate. We have the zamp system and I'm happy with it, the longest we have went without power (boondocking) is 8 consecutive days and the zamp system had our batteries (agm) fully charged at the end of every day, full disclosure; we were in full sun and it was sunny every day. My wife did engage the inverter to make toast with an electric toaster, and cook dinner with the microwave. We are pretty conservative with power and it works for us.
The easy start does work as advertised, we run our ac with a 2000 watt Honda generator.
Good luck with your choices, it's a fun process, and I think you will be happy with the results!
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Same here. We leave it connected to the trailer all the time. Dump, two refills/dumps, then the gray tank. I have a clear section to watch for the last clear flush before doing the gray.
Mike, when you refill the black tank for your extra rinses, how full do you fill it? Also, when you dump before storing (between trips), do you fill it with water/chemicals/magic positions? We’ve got 1 trip under our belt and so many questions. -Angela
Not Mike, but the method that works best for me; When we go to dump, if the tanks are not "full" we add more water, the key is sufficient water for a good flush, then when you use the back flush feature I close the black tank valve and fill to approximately 3/4 then drain until it runs clear, if I feel it needs more I do it again, experiment, see what works for you. I don't use chemicals in the tank, if you use enough water to clean it, it doesn't smell.
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We have hull#219, it has continuity at the plug and is charging. You may get a full 14 volts to your trl but not necessarily, it depends on you tow vehicles wiring.
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We took our new Ollie out first time this week to test things out. Mostly going well but first thing was a small leak in shark bite at hot water line. Caused water to weep out from bottom hull. Found leak and pressed down on Sharbite and it did move a little. Appears to have stopped the leak all but a little moist to the touch but not sure yet. Next I decided to try the boondocking water tank so I followed the instructions for filling my potable water tank, drove to my new site, set everything up, changed the valve configuration to boondocking for water, flipped the water pump switch and nothing. Light at switch did come on but pump never started running and after 15 minutes still never got any water. Couldn’t diagnose so moved to a hookup site. I am fortunate I was at a campground and able to do that verses just being out there. Anyone got any suggestions on if I am doing something wrong? I have a call into Richie but it is Sat. If anyone see this and would like to give me a call at 704.281.8608 that would be great. If we are able to diagnoise will post
Don't know about your water leak, but you don't have to reconfigure your valves to use your on board water supply, unless they're set to winterize. Put them back in their original position. When you hook up to the city water portOn your trl the water will come out of your fixtures without having to turn on your water pump, if you fill up your fresh water tank( the other port) you just turn on your pump and water should flow.
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Thanks for the information….very helpful. While I seem to be tapped into electrical experts (not my strong point) let me ask another power question or two…. I have a couple Honda 2000 inverter generators mainly to run a/c but hope to be able to use only one with Ollie and the soft start capacitor added to the a/c. Does that work as advertised? What controls whether the electrical demand is satisfied via shore power (if plugged in), on board inverter or generator? I am not clear how it all works together.
The Honda 2000 watt generator will run your a/c when used in conjunction with the easy start run capacitor. The on board converter controls the electrical useage through the shore power connection. I guess I'm the sole dissenter on the use of the zamp solar system, I do wish that oliver had installed a separate battery monitor with the system, but overall I'm happy with the setup. I don't have anywhere near the experience as other posters on this forum, but I go with the k.i.s.s. System for electronics especially. The longest we have boon docked has been 8 consecutive days and our zamp system brought our batteries up to full every day, we're pretty conservative on our energy usage, but we use the microwave, run a electric toaster, and my wife uses her hair dryer( not all at the same time or necessarily in the same day) hope this helps with your decision.
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I like my Zamp system, just spent 8 consecutive days boondocking, with the max fan on 24/7, inverter on making toast and my wife drying her hair, batteries were fully recharged (went into float) no later than 4 everyday. I considered hooking up a battery monitor, but don't feel a need for it right now.Routlaw – from what I was told the change was made primarily because “most” owners didn’t need or want the advanced features and complicated nature of the old system. Zamp was deemed to be of a more user friendly design. Bill-
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Now we are learning about the front jack. I had to use the manual crank handle to lower the jack the other day after having low voltage to the jack itself, I believe… I’ve now read the jack PDF and it doesn’t talk about a voltage limiter, but obviously there is one built in somewhere. I had 12.2vdc on the battery but only 10.4 – 11.3 at the fuse, with no power at the toggle switch. So the complete power loss was between the fuse and the switch, with partial voltage loss between the fuse and the bus bar. The wire does pass through the motor housing and because we were located in an area with no cell service at Mount Rainier National Park, I didn’t want to just pull the gear housing off of the jack with no knowledge of what was going on under those 4 bolts, so out came the jack handle. After lowering the jack, which reminded me of our Casita days, I plugged the trailer into the car via the 7 pin connector and once again power came back on at the jack between the fuse and the motor… The jack works once again… There’s only 2 possibilities that I can see, either a broken wire inside the housing or a built in low voltage cut off that isn’t mentioned in the owners manual PDF… The company recommends a 12 gauge wire to power the jack and with that much power loss between the battery and the jack, the wire that’s there now has an issue somewhere. Anyway, if you have a jack with no power at the switch, try plugging the trailer into the car first to see if power is restored before using the manual jack handle. It’s about the same as hand cranking a Casita, so it’s no big deal and it can be cranked fast but our supplied crank has no handle on it, just a pin to catch your hand on, so I’ll be making that call to Jason again about getting the rest of the handle that is shown in the picture from the manufacturer because having that pin just going through a bare metal handle at the hand hold is really extremely idiotic… I did shoot a video on hand cranking and the jack head disassembly but it’s still sitting in the camera for now to add to the greasing and jack maintenance video that is Now in the filming process Reed Yesterday, we made it to Mount Saint Helen. You can still see where the mountain blew it’s top completely off behind us in the pic. Then here’s a pic at Mount Rainier from yesterday
Try running a separate ground to the jack.
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Our LGP Monitor is showing OPN, what does that mean? Is the LP monitor suppose to work?
No, it's not hooked up.
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<p style="text-align: right;">Any 2000 watt generator should start the ac with the "soft start" installed, I prefer the Honda, none of them will power more than just the ac at any given time, the ac draws around 1500 watts by itself. The adapter John is talking about can be installed on the end of the power cord provided by Oliver, it's 15 amp, the weak part of the setup, but it will work. I took an old 30amp rv cord and removed and replaced both plugs with a 30amp locking female and a 20 amp male, works great. You can put an adapter on the trailer, and use a heavy extension cord like John does, but again they're 15 amps, either method will work.</p>
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We have hull# 219, I installed the soft start myself and the 2ooo watt, 20 amp Honda runs the ac just fine. My thinking was I didn't need the 30 amp companion generator be cause I don't need to pair it with another one.
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Disregard my previous post, bad information, you have to remove the toilet to get at the tee bolts, they're attached to the flange. It doesn't look like a big job, but I would have thought they were stainless steel, I don't know that Oliver is at fault ( hardware supplied by vendor) but I'm sure they'll take care of it.
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No experience with Airstream, but a positive experience with Oliver!
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You should be able to just replace the bolt, as long as the toilet seal is intact, not leaking. That's indeed surprising it seems everything else is stainless. The porcelain will clean right up with 400 grit wet and dry sandpaper.
Reed Yesterday, we made it to Mount Saint Helen. You can still see where the mountain blew it’s top completely off behind us in the pic. 
The next tug
in Towing an Oliver
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Tessa roadster, 0 to 60 1.9 seconds!!!! Think of all the testosterone!!