KenB

I'm in the middle of upgrading from four 6V AGM batteries to three Battle Born lithium batteries and have learned quite a bit about the electrical system on our Elite II this past week. On my 2018 there isn't a master electrical cut off switch. I'm installing one as part of the lithium upgrade. Disconnecting the battery cables will power down the trailer, but the lines from the solar controller to the battery will still be hot, at least on my 2018. There is a dedicated circuit breaker for the solar, it's just not the type that you can manually disconnect/reset, so you can't easily disable the solar charging with it. If you don't understand this statement completely, please don't start disconnecting battery terminals. I don't know what an accidental dead short to the live solar leads would do to the system, nothing good I'm sure. If you just want to kill power to the propane detector under the dinette, there is a 1 amp fuse under the street side bunk on a 2018 in the wire that leads to the propane detector. The wire for it comes off of the hot side of the circuit breaker that is also under that bunk. The propane detector is wired direct to the battery and is always hot. The only way to cut power to the propane detector on mine is to pull that fuse under the street side bunk. Though finding and pulling the 1 amp fuse isn't a big deal, I like John's idea of just covering up the openings on the propane detector best and not messing with the electrical. HTH, Ken

I’ve been disappointed with our AirTags, especially the ones attached to our two grouse hunting English Setters. Every few months they decide to take themselves for a walk and leave our yard to chase a bunny or just explore the neighborhood. They have a GPS verified average gait of 6 mph; in other words they can cover some ground quickly. When we go hunting they’d run 20+ miles every day if I’d let them. They’re high energy. I put AirTags on each of them to try and quickly locate them before they get hit by a car or picked up by a bad person. In the last six months they’ve run away twice. Over the course of several hours of missing dogs I got exactly one pinged position from just one of the dogs. They were running through back yards, front yards, and city parks the whole time. They were certainly near Apple phones and personal networks most of the time but weren’t showing up at all on my Apple phone locator. I’ve found they are worthless for a dog on the move, even in a populated residential neighborhood. Admittedly, the directions say they are NOT meant for tracking animals. Except for that one time ping, Apple said they were at home the whole time when they were really away and running without me I’ve used a different AirTag to find my lost keys in the house before. That worked well, but I probably would have found them eventually anyway. For $25 they are better than nothing for dogs, but not much. I can’t imagine a AirTagged stolen camper or generator would fare much better than my lost dogs for live tracking. Be sure to be realistic in your expectations.

I bought a full set of Timken bearings from Summit Racing last year, but haven't got around to installing them yet. I just went out in the garage to take a look. The boxes the seals come in are printed Made in Taiwan, the seals themselves are bright orange and have Timken molded into them. The boxes for the bearings don't have a country specified, but the bearings themselves have USA etched into the top surface. I bought from Summit because I'd read here that they are a Timken dealer. Another data point for everyone.

I have a vintage Diana 24 leaning near the back door to motivate unwelcome critters to move on if they decide to make holes in our home's cedar siding.

We're talking about it. We'll be in the general area for a Land Cruiser event that ends on the 16th and we will have our Oliver in tow. Not sure if my wife will want to spend more of her vacation time balance for this or not. Just last year we spent a day running 4x4 trails around Camp Hale with a group of Land Cruisers. I remember stopping next to the cement structures in the photos to air up and air down tires. It's a beautiful area. Should be very peaceful.

There are more Mn state parks open for the winter than I thought. Make sure you make reservations in advance. https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/winter_camping.html Ken

I live in the Mpls/StPaul area in Minnesota and have driven our LE II to Utah/Colorado and back in March (and in the summer). Everything is weather dependent. A pretty major winter storm moved across Nebraska when we made the trip west. We dropped down to Kansas to avoid it. It added a 1/2 day of additional travel. I70 west of Denver closed for a few hours the next day due to an avalanche. Not a big deal to sit out a road closer when towing a camper (you have food, water, heat, and a toilet), but it could have been bad depending on plans and reservations. Don’t plan on covering summer travel distances in the winter. The truck stops and rest areas are always jammed full with semi rigs between here and Denver. You can’t depend on them being accessible for even an hour or two of rest. Rigs are often parked up and down solid in the access lanes. It took five summers of traveling, but I’ve been to every state park in Minnesota. While open for day visitors, most close the gates to the campgrounds around mid October and don’t open again until Spring. The Mn DNR has a good website where you can make reservations. Check it out before assuming they’re open. Mn state parks require online reservations now. Ranger stations will be unmanned in the winter, except MAYBE weekends. Cell service isn’t guaranteed. You may end up backtracking many miles to pick up a signal to claim a campsite even IF you find an open park. The days of filling out a slip and dropping your fee in the box on the post are mostly over. I know that many of the National Forest campgrounds around Ely are also closed during the winter. It’s probably not worth it to plow out the snow, especially in the camping spurs. The Army Corp of Engineers close their campgrounds too. Even in early October I have most campgrounds to myself. Call the ranger district for the area of the BWCA that you plan to visit, it’s pretty slow up there in the winter, they should have time to talk. They’d have a list if there are any camping options. Unless you’re driving freeway, stick to daylight hours anyplace north of St Paul due to deer strikes. At least the rut will be over when you’ll be here. Hwy 35 from Iowa to Duluth will be well taken care of. Same for Hwys 61 and 53 north out of the Duluth area and towards the BWCA. Expect side roads off of 35/53/61 to be slippery and ice covered. It’ll be a pleasant surprise if they’re not. I’ve never seen anyone use chains in Mn. Studded tires are illegal for residents. Everything east of Duluth over to Sault Ste. Marie, MI is pretty desolate. You’ll probably take highway 2 east out of Superior, WI after heading south out of the BWCA. It’s a two lane state highway. Don’t assume gas stations will be open late. LOTS of deer on that road. I haven’t been east of The Soo at all, so I can say what it looks past there. I’ve driven my motorcycle around Lake Superior in the summer. I would not want to tow my camper around it in the winter. No driving up there after dark. If a storm comes through, it can be hours before a tow truck is available. They might have to come from a considerable distance and will be backed up. Plan on spending the night in the ditch if you go off the road late in the day. Cell service is spotty away from the freeway in MN, WI and in the UP. It seems to switch between Verizon and AT&T depending where you are. If I was making the trip, I’d lean heavily on our Harvest Host subscription. It’s more likely a business would have a place for you to park compared to public camping facilities. Hope this helps. It can get VERY cold. I used to live in Duluth. It can be below 0° for weeks, especially as you go north. Let me know if you need anything else. Good Luck and be flexible.

The attached photo is the only markings on the hitch. In order to make it fit, you’ll need to trim a little of the plastic around the front recovery points. DON'T drive off-road with this particular hitch in place. It rides too low. On pavement it’d barely be okay. I forgot it was there when going down a logging road once while bird hunting. I came over a rise that quickly dropped down into a deep hole on the other side. The front hitch caught the far edge of the hole and face planted the whole rig. The guns, gear, and hot coffee from friends in the backseat all ended up in the front seat. A couple of dollars at the car wash and a high pressure hose wasn’t enough to clean up the muddy mess under the truck. I had to put it on a lift at work and remove all the front skid plates to clean out all of the impacted mud. Fortunately nothing was bent or broke. This past year I came into a small three cylinder diesel tractor with a front end loader. It’s got a spot for a hitch ball on the edge of the bucket. I’m going to use the tractor, bucket, and ball to place the trailer in its tight winter resting spot under the back garage car port once I quit ruffed grouse hunting in a few weeks. With the super short wheelbase, it should make it even easier than the front hitch on the Land Cruiser.

My furnace short cycled. The furnace blinked out a trouble code that said something like 'blocked discharge vent'. I popped all the grills off of the heat registers and ran the furnace again. No more codes and no more short cycling. I then put the grills back on while being very sure the adjustable dampeners were in the wide open position. Again no codes and no short cycling. Mine doesn’t click from the air conditioner, so yours is probably something else. It doesn’t cost anything to pull the heat register covers and give it a try though. BTW-The outside cover to my furnace is translucent white plastic. If it’s dark out you can see the red LED on the control board blink out its trouble code through the white plastic without oven taking the outside cover off. I caught the blinking codes by accident while walking around the camper in the dark. Good Luck.

I had a base model Parkit360, not the same as the Trailer Vallet EX, but similar. Wouldn’t come close to working in my situation. Next I bought a front mount hitch for our Land Cruiser and was much more happy with the arrangement. Very maneuverable with the steering wheels being so close to the hitch. And much less expensive than any of the mechanical or electric trailer movers. Consider a front mount hitch, it mounts with just four bolts and other than the weight, it unbolts when you don’t need it pretty easily.

Thank for the late night comment John. You’re right. My mental math with Volts, Watts, and Amps was off by a decimal place this evening. The onboard converter is the way to go.

Very timely. Thanks for asking the question. I’m dealing with battery problems today too. This evening I drove 150 miles up to our rural property where we keep the Oliver most of the summer and fall. There isn’t electric power on the property anymore, so it’s off grid camping when we’re here. First thing I notice when I drive up to the camper in the dark is that the outside porch lights were left on for at least a week, 24 hrs/day. That was my mistake. Leaving the lights on was compounded by overcast skies with rain and snow all week keeping solar production way down. After unlocking the door and turning on the interior lights, I see the battery voltage is down to a cringeworthy 11.0V. Once I turned on the furnace, the battery Voltage dropped to somewhere around 10.4V! I realize that now I have an urgent problem. If I don’t get some additional power to the batteries in the next few hours, I’m not going to be able to run the furnace tonight, and then I’m going to be dealing with frozen pipes tomorrow. Luckily last week I bought a 1000W Yamaha RV type generator at a garage sale, so now I’m listening to generator noise while charging the batteries and running the furnace so the pipes don’t freeze tonight. Surprisingly, the little 1000 Watt Yamaha generator puts out the same 8A@12V DC for battery charging as our big 5000W Honda generator. Of course the Honda puts out much more AC power, but it’s puzzling as to why their DC power output rating is equal. The new generator has been running for about two hours now and the battery shows 13.2V. I’ll probably go fuel it up again before bed and just let it run. We don’t have any neighbors to worry about. Our factory solar panels with healthy batteries should have handled leaving a few lights on for the week, overcast or not. Now I’m shopping for new batteries too.

I agree with following up with this. I also agree with this. Please add your info to your signature or to your post.

Please do not jam a paper clip into a precision brass orifice, carefully or otherwise. You’ll create additional problems for yourself, likely expensive. If you decide this is necessary (unlikely on a newer trailer), you’ll need a probe softer than the brass jet, think more like broom straw, brush bristle, or my favorite, a single strand from a multi strand copper wire. I’ve cleaned dozens (hundreds?) of jets on small engines and RV appliances. Please don’t ruin your jet by ‘cleaning’ it with a paperclip.

It’s easy to forget the 110 switch for the electric heating element on the water heater. Is that turned on? I’ve made that mistake myself.