KenB

I don’t think you get to blame that on a previous owner. I also have a 2018 and that’s the same way mine looks too. That IS the stock condition. I’ve had to re-tape the factory job, and then take another swing at it a year later after my 1st try came loose. It looked like they used scrap styrofoam and dunnage they picked out of the dumpster to make up spacers to wedge our refrigerators in place. Not only was it poor workmanship, mine was mounted in the opening crooked, mosquitos and road dust get into the camper around the refrigerator because it’s not sealed well against the outside, the refrigerator eventually worked its mounting screws loose, but the biggest disappointment was the refrigerator was delivered DOA. It seems 2018 was not a good year for Oliver refrigerators. I am the original owner.

We stayed in Fort Collins in our camper last summer for a Toyota Land Cruiser event. There are boon docking campsites and a few electric sites up and down the Cache la Poudre River. There are YouTube drive-thru videos on-line of every campground along the river to help you pick a site. There are lots of sites up at the Horsetooth reservoir that might fit your needs. We couldn't get one, they were all booked months in advance. A very popular spot. Maybe if you keep looking you'll find a cancelation. In the end we ended up at the Fort Collins KOA. Not my ideal solution, but it was clean and well run. We just needed a spot to park and sleep, so we didn't avail ourselves of any of the park amenities. It was just an expensive spot for us to sleep for a couple of nights.

I've installed several dozen rivnuts and would not consider installing them in a fiberglass hole. They take too much effort to expand and I think they would at a minimum bulge the surrounding fiberglass. I wasn't familiar with these, but looked them up. I especially agree that the aluminum version would be great solution. The literature specifically mentions use in fiberglass as an application. If you have a Rivnut installation tool I bet it would work with these too.

I saw this earlier in the day and have been waiting for someone else to challenge this statement. I agree with the general statement that as AC frequency increases, current will as well. It just doesn't apply to those of us who connect our camper to the power grid. Maybe if you were boondocking and running a crude generator the frequency could change with a change in load, but not if powered by the grid. AC frequency in the US is fixed at the power plant at 60 Hz (in Europe and many other places it's 50 Hz). As far as I know there is no changing the AC frequency with any of our appliances or by loads at the campground. The purpose of having the EMS display a code for frequency is because you could be running off of a non-inverter generator, such as a PTO driven farm generator. You can end up with high or low frequency AC power if the tractor's PTO turns the generator input shaft too fast or too slow. It's very unlikely that this is the issue. A normal multi-meter doesn't have a setting for measuring AC frequency. A specialized multi-meter or an oscilloscope would be able to measure AC line frequency. Most of us are not carrying those specialized tools in our camper. HTH, Ken (I took a couple of electrical engineering classes a long time ago as engineering degree electives. If I've got it wrong myself, I don't mind being corrected. It's not something I use everyday.)

A search for 'Keg Lube' will return a food grade o-ring lubricant brewers use on their brewing equipment. All the fittings in a brewery have o-rings in the mechanical connections in hoses and tanks that handle liquids. You can be assured that if they are being used in a brewery they won't impart and flavor or taste to the beer or your Oliver water supply. I'm not sure the same can be said of the tubes of silicone lube you'll find at the hardware store. You can buy keg lube in sizes that vary between 1 oz and 55 gallon drums. A 1oz tube would last forever for most people. And it'd be food grade. If I was on the road, I'd probably just use some cooking oil of some sort with a plan to replace it when I got home. It'd eventually go rancid. This is the keg lube I use.

I have a little experience with corroded stainless steel. My experience is from when I TIG welded the stainless steel brewing fittings together for my home brewery. I already knew how to weld mild steel, but had to research the specifics of welding stainless steel and how to maintain its stainless characteristics. Are you using a chlorine bleach based cleaner on your sink? Stop doing that. Chlorine can dissolve the protective oxides on a stainless steel surface, exposing the metal surface to the environment which leads to rust. How about cleaning the sink with steel wool? That's not good either. Iron fragments can get microscopically lodged in the stainless which leads to rust. Use a ScotchBrite pad or bronze wool instead. In order to passivate (establish the protective chromium oxide layer) the recently cleaned spot on your stainless steel sink, you need to use a product containing oxalic acid. As mentioned earlier, Bar Keepers friend is one product. Others include Klein King Stainless and Copper Cleaner, and Revere Copper and Stainless Steel cleaner. Bar Keepers friend comes in a powder and a liquid. I always make a paste out of the powder and scrub the area clean with a ScotchBrite pad to passivate any recently welded stainless steel fittings. A paste of Barkeepers Friend powder and a green ScotchBrite scrubby pad should take care of the issue on your sink. Just keep the chlorine bleach products away from anything stainless steel. HTH, Ken

I'm going to disagree that the cracks are merely cosmetic. In the parts of the country where we get snow and rain, water and ice melting chemicals get between the steel core and the stainless steel covers. The steel core rusts and bulges the covers. Now a socket won't go over the stainless cover or fit correctly, even if you pick a bigger socket. Since the core can turn to a rusty mush, the cover falls off and you're left with a vaguely hex shaped nut that doesn't fit any tools in your box. Your best attack is taking an undersized impact socket and hammering in onto the rusted, undersized, nut. I've also used a pneumatic chisel and a plasma torch to cut them away. I hope you have a full set of tools on the side of the road if you have a flat tire and bulged lug nuts. Cracks in the stainless cover exacerbate this problem. My opinion is from 25 years of teaching high school shop, including auto mechanics. 16 year old kids that bring their cars into the shop are usually driving rusty hand-me-down cars. GM vehicles come to mind as consistently having an issue with these type of lug nuts. I think I had to replace all the nuts on my kids Honda Element for the same reason too. In the SW you'll probably never have an issue, but for anyplace with regular snow and moisture, in the long term they're a bad idea. It's not just a cosmetic problem for many of us.

Nothing earth shattering, but I thought I’d share some observations regarding freezing or not freezing items inside the camper during cold weather. Our Elite II is often parked on a piece of lake property we own in north central Minnesota. It’s strictly boondocking. We were up last weekend and ran the heat for about 24 hours before we headed home. We shut off the heat when we left. Tonight I’m back up and noticed some items were frozen, some were not, depending on their location. The weather has been in the low 20’s to mid 30’s during the last three days since we left on Sunday noon. It’s now Wednesday evening and I’m back. I’d winterized everything on a previous trip, so I’m dry camping. The composting toilet makes this possible. My analog recording thermometer is mounted above the microwave and to the left of the cabinet door. It recorded a low of 20°F. My digital battery shunt said it was 25° in the battery compartment when I got here around 5pm. The 1 gallon dog bowl on the floor of the bathroom is frozen. A 1/2 full 5 gallon water jug stored on the bathroom floor is frozen. There were four disposable one gallon plastic drinking water jugs from the grocery store on top of the composting toilet. None were froze at all. The contents of the pantry including drinks and canned goods were all fine. The contents of the refrigerator were all fine. This included eggs, pickles, beer, drinking water, and condiments. (In the name of science I opened and enjoyed several cans of beer tonight just to be sure cans from both the top shelf, bottom shelf, and door were all fine!) The take away? Don’t store anything on the floor that you don’t want to freeze. Anything off of the floor or in a cabinet was fine. Not sure how long it’d be fine, but for this one data point it works out. (Saturday is the start of Minnesota firearms whitetail deer season. I keep the camper up north all fall as a base to bird hunt ruffed grouse with my pointing dogs. Since the orange army is taking over the woods for a couple of weeks, I’ll move the Oliver home for the winter and put it away in the back yard under a carport.)

I asked Service the same question while upgrading to Battleborn batteries this spring. Here is a copy of their response:

I tried the supports last weekend and am posting my follow up. They fit great and I was astonished at how dirty it was under my panels. They are going to be a great help once I get the trailer home and cleaned off before winter storage. Unfortunately they didn't help improve the charging as I'd hoped, in fact, they made it worse. Last Saturday was a very overcast day. The panels were only putting out two amps. My wife was inside calling out the charging rate as I repeatedly tipped and lowered the panels. When flat they put out the two amps, when raised they repeatedly put out only 1.4 amps. I know I was a little off on my aim with the panels towards the sun, but I was pretty close. I would have had to move the whole camper to improve the solar tracking aim by maybe 10%. I expected some improvement by tipping the panels up, but never would have guessed it would make it worse. It did drive home how important it is to keep the whole panel in the sun. With just the shade from my hand, the panel would drop from 2 amps to 1.1 amps. I've heard the individual cells that make up a panel are wired in series. This would seem to confirm it. One shaded cell practically kills the whole output from the panel. I'm not done experimenting with the tipped panels, but for now I am keeping the generator handy to top off the three Battleborn batteries when they get low. Next on the fall to-do list is a temperature driven relay to turn the battery heaters on if I'm sleeping or not around during the day when the temperature dips. I think I've got all the parts on hand, so it won't cost anything more to give it a try. I'm really impressed with this battery monitor from Thornwave a friend gave me to play with. Not only does it internally store all of it's charging data when I'm away, it has a relay control that can throw a relay signal due to voltage, temperature, timers, and a few others. I'm not sure why more people aren't using it. I mostly hear about Victron charge controllers, but not this one.

Just wanted to say Thank You to John for putting this mod documentation together. I knocked out a set of extension arms tonight. Tomorrow we are heading up north to some property we have. The camper is parked there for most of the summer and fall, but it's boon docking only. As the sun drops lower and lower on the horizon, the panels often can't keep up after a number of cloudy days and the additional load of running the heater occasionally at night during the fall. The fall color prediction from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources this weekend is 50-75% of peak up at the camper. Temps will be 60-80 degrees, so not much use for the heater this weekend. I'm looking forward to trying out the arms and seeing how much they might improve solar charging. Thanks again John.

I've installed these fans too, but don't remember how long the machine screws were. I think you can look at the back of the speakers and can see approximately how thick the fiberglass is in this area. You can get to the speakers when you remover the access panels in the attic. You'll have to do that for the job anyway.

Thanks for the clarification John. It really doesn't matter to me anymore anyway. When I upgraded to three 100 AH Battleborn batteries this spring, I disconnected the seven pin charging wire from the bus under the street side bed knowing that the charging profile from my Land Cruiser alternator wasn't going to be a match for the new lithium batteries. Someday if I make the compressor refrigerator upgrade I'll consider the Redarc DC to DC charger too. For now the solar meets all of our charging needs, including running a CPAP machine at night. BTW - Just came back inside to enjoy the A/C for a few minutes. I'm changing out the radiator on the Land Cruiser today before heading to Colorado next week with the Oliver for a 4x4 trip near Fort Collins with some of the guys from Ih8mud.com forum. The radiator has the typical crack around the old design raised boss.

What do you mean with the Land Cruiser exception? How do they charge our Olivers differently? Thanks, Ken

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.