Geronimo John

GJ LOGIC: Time before your trip is precious, and with the mods you have done, and the electrical short wires, and the exploratory work you will be doing to fix the original, and unknown supply chain difficulities, and that you may need reliable Heat Pump, and possibly the A/C even for a winter trip, and there are lots of time stealers in all the "and's" listed above. So goal is to get your A/C Heat Pump on line soonest as time saved to do so before a trip is important. Besides, how long it takes you to fix the old one while it is on your work bench is not a worry. Hence, I would take it down, install the new one, mod it as you have done, and roll on to travel. EARLY ADOPTORS: Your experience reminds me of mine with the Houghton. Early adoptors seem to pay a high price for beng early. But as was my experience with the Houghton Mods, it paid off very nicely. But it also resulted in my caution for other owners not to go down that path unless they were very handy and willing to toss the warranty out the window. I suspect that you'll echo that thought down the road. GI Tongue in Cheek: On the other hand, wif you go the bench route, then have fun with experimenting on it for shop use and noise reduction idea. You could go with agressive ideas that you would not risk on the one in Ollie. That turns the process into FUN in my world. Heck you'll likely end up with a 10 page mod post that makes that unit THE best on the market. So before posting the DIY, blackmail the MFG to pay you $$$ for the solution or you'll not post it and your's will be the last one sold to OTT owners as well as the SOB owners that read our forum. Considering all the time you spent on this upgrade, that really would bring you a smile! LOL GJ Happy wife, happy life. Smart guy.... with a grin!

I have not, nor do I entend on such winter camping that requires salted roads. However I noted my underdesigned 1750 Dexter springs starting to fail after six years service and 31,000 miles. So time wise, I think your 2022 model year group has some headroom before you'll be seeing the spring failure process. From what I have observed, it is most likely going to occurr first on the rear leaf of the back axle. Precluding a significant response to the below green post, I am suggesting checking your back springs occasionally each season when you are looking at your rear jacks. Let's see where this goes with the green below. Any owner not experiencing a back axle rear leaf failure first or seeing a back and front spring failure at the same time, please post back. Otherwise, the above sentence may be a bell ringer. GJ

We only monitor the four Ollie tires. We carry a Dewalt 20V air compressor. Should we have a flat, the Dewalt is handy to top off the spares if low. Of is we get into the two Ollie tire losses, we can run with three trailer tires with the lonely one pumped up to 80 PSI. I like this options system. The other advantage is that I only have 4 sensor batteries to change, and since I purchased spare sensors, I have spares to boot. GJJ

If they have the below axle tag, then the spring rating shows 3500#, that divided by 2 springs = 1750 pound rated springs. Those are the same ones that have a failure issue for the OE2's. if it's for an OE1, then you are in an Unsafe To Use mode... IMHO. GJ

For sure if your Litho's are going to freeze, then Isolate them! Our Litho's are in a semi-sealed box. That box prevents wind chilling and provides some insulation from the outside situtation. it also gets some heat tranfer from the cabin thru it's inside walls. So when does the battery actually freeze? It would be have to be really cold for a long duration. If I were in your shoes, I would not get the heaters. But I would give myself some "Options". As I have stated many times, "I Like Having Options". Some suggestions for your situtation: Determine the brand/model Extreme Weather info: What is their recommendation for long term storage of the battery in extremely cold conditions with no supervision by the owner. This will give you a worst case process for that battery. For the Battleborns: Charge to 50 - 60% and isolate with master switch until thawed. Then recharge at a reasonable rate to 100% SOC. Remember that is for their battery only. Other MFG's have their process. This would be a consideration in which ones to buy. In your situtation I would consider these (In priority order): Park with the sun on your street side if expecting temps may be an issue. When it warms up, open the battery box door. Close it before it starts cooling down for the afternoon/night. Insulate the door of the battery box. Installed a master cut-off switch if you don't already have one. Just in case your situtation gets really bad. Create cabin air circulation into and out of the battery compartment. A couple of vents (High and Low) and a small 12v fan exhausting the top vent, with a coin style switch to come on when the box is getting near freezing. This would afford significant protection. For less than $200 you could do all four of the above. But, if you really want to go overboard, you could get some bluetooth temperature sensors to monitor the box temperature. Severall greats posts about this topic here in the forum. Hopefully their authors will comment back with their link. Good luck, and enjoy your Ollie! GJ

JD: For giggles and grins it would be fun to do a post mortum on your unit. Then to get even, fix it to cool your Work Shop! Granger carries a Ton of fans. Even if you get the capacity off a bit, it will still cool your Work Shop just fine. And you get to smile every time you turn it on! GJ

Yes, the single bolt on the BB must carry the load. On the Lithionics I believe they use the same bolt, but the buss bars have several bolts that appear to share the load. I recall this from one of the videos. GJ

I took off my 2019 SS Hub XX + the small round pieces to look like John Davies for the express pupose of maintenance and using a IR thermal gun for brake temp measurements. One less thing to clean or worry about. I have at least two of them that I can donate for thh cost of shipping to any that would like mine. I used them for 2 years. I'll be back to Ollie in June and can inventory and ship then. Geronimo John.

Thirteen times I should have been outright killed or at least very seriously hurt. Additionally I survived a broken back, and once I was dead. I am greatful that God did not want me yet, and he gave me an opportunity to be a better man. GJ

Maybe not, maybe yes. But sadly, you'll not likely to ever know. But far more likely it WAS damaged and returned by a pevious customer. And they reboxed it and sold it again. The odds of them actually testing a return is IMO near the low side of zero. Now that's a percentage I would love to see from Amazon Returns.... 🙂 GJ

I'm not a Truma guy, so this is just a suggestion to consider. Removing the faceplate inside the cabin one can see a lot of the drain guts. Kinks there would certainly show up as water leaking somewhere. For most A/C systems it requires the removal of four screws inside the cabin. May be worth a try. TRUMA GUYS? Please verify is this is applicable to your units.

For the older trailers that have the Suburban "Dual Power" hot water heater, another great way to ruin your day is to forget to turn OFF the120V power switch on your hot water. Key to the install is to make sure you have large enough cables for the DC to DC and you protect the circuit. The newer 50 amp Orion DC to DC unit is STELLER! We have the older 30 amp, and it is just GREAT.

It doesn't. It is often sucked in. For example, It often is a "Sucked In" by the pump from a loose or faulty fitting on the draw side. If boondockng mode, it is ususally your hose bibb connection having a bad hose rubber gasket or is not tight. Such conditions will really slow down the transport of water from your gerry can into the pump and FWT. Just one example. Another is having a loose connection sucking air in the line that runs from the FWT to the pump. Etc. GJ

I prefer not drilling large holes in the side or the top if they can be avoided. So for our solar suit case, I plug it into one of these mounted on the door of the battery area. It only requires a small hole, easy to mount, and could easily be repaired (or replaced) should for some reason I no longer have my solar suit case setup. And it is quite inexpensive vs. the larger plug holes. Or you could mount it thru one of the vent holes. However it is limited to 30 amps for the 10 AWG one. It typically used for 200 watts of solar panels. GJ

Excellent reminder. I know JD petty well and first he's a great photographer and also a careful guy. Likely he slowed down for a moment for the picture, and as such, it probably taken by his Shot Gun Chris. GJ

I periodically mention especially these two safety tips, mostly for new owners to the forum.... and to keep especially these three safety tips "top of mind" for us older ones.

I agree. Sadly, some folks are just a bit.... odd. Glad you are not one of them. 🙂 GJ

Likely the first item AI answered with: Brand Name KNKA is a brand specializing in environmental home appliances such as dehumidifiers, air purifiers, and humidifiers. According to their official website, the letters stand for the slogan "Keep Natural Keep Advancing". Other potential meanings Kanka (Turkish slang): The word "kanka" in Turkish is a common slang term for "buddy," "pal," or "bro" and is a shortened form of "kan kardeşi" (blood brother/sister). Kaṅka (Sanskrit): In Sanskrit, Kaṅka (कङ्क) is a word with multiple meanings, often referring to a type of bird like a "heron" or "curlew". NKA (Medical abbreviation): In a medical context, the abbreviation used is often NKA, which stands for "No Known Allergies". K, Ka (Radar detection): When discussing radar detectors, K-band and Ka-band are frequency ranges used by police radar guns. Ka is short for the German word kurz-above, meaning "short".

Bet that experience resulted in a few "bad words" as another famous owner has had. Glad you were not hurt and figured it out. One suggestion that many owners have adopted when working on the tires and/or axles, or for that matter anything under Ollie, is to leave the trailer connected to your 6,000 pound anchor (TV). When doing so, tie flagging to the steering wheel as a reminder not to drive off. The anchor will help stabilize things a bit. Another is to try always to do such work on a "Hard Stand" such as asphault or concrete. If not on such a surface, place dunnage under your jack feet to reduce the possibility of one of the jacks sinking in a soft spot. This has happened before. GJ

Cort: Wow, between Leaf Springs, Lug Nuts and a Blown Engine you've had a tough season for sure. I hope the bad karma truck passes you by for awhile. May only Good luck and sunshine visit you! GJ

Steve great picture! GJ

Doing some more research: Bad News: Apparently this problem was documented in 2021 in side by side comparison video. They states that the Brand B was 90% there, and only needs $5 in parts. Suggest you view this one. This now could be a class action. Good News: Looking at the video it is evident that the problem COULD BE FIXED. Question I have is did DF change the design of their batteries to fix the problem back then? Or did they ignore the warning? GJ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt0joJc9HPo&t=294s

That is a bit concerning. GJ

One of the very spot on early-on statements of this forum was from Patriot: Their first written response as shreadded in the YouTube response was characterized as "Gaslighting". I think that was a bit harsh. But it did not go over as well as I am sure DF wished. They would have been better served by stating that they have been made aware of the issue, and will commit the resources to determine the root cause. And then appropriate remediation as appropriate. They lost ground that can not easily be made up. But the PR damage is done, and it needs to be repaired. Above in this getting longer and longer thread, I postulated that the root cause of the heating, and the failure mechanism that resulted in the arching, was likely excessively amp draws on a per battery basis. DF needs a new approach here is what I recommend: Test beyond what OTT MountainOliver did. DF should test their 100's with progressively higher loading to the point where the battery B+ terminal base temperature approaches what is safe for the design. My SWAG is that it will tolerate up to 15 minutes at 200 Amps peak and likely 100 amps contineous to 10% SOC before the B+ temp is highenough to cause concern for the plastic deformation of the "plastic" structural support of of the bolt and post. As most of our OTT OE2 owners with the BB's have installed 3 BB's, that level would be fine for our occasional A/C on inverter with other loads such as the microwave also on line. Knowing the facts would basically would go a LONG WAY to ease the concerns on this thread for sure. Not to mention a lot of other owners across their RV customer base that operate as we do. This would also buy time to safely allow us to operate, while DF address others in higher need. But still address ours in due time. Secondly, Present their findings to their customers. If a redesign of the B+ post is needed, tell us. Finally, DF should state that they will stand behind their ten year warranty. And if they cannot do so that they will provide a prorated reimbursement of the cost we paid for them. These actions would put DF ahead of the issue as so wisely stated by Patriot. GJ

The 24 hours is sort of a standard. But the temperatue of the unit when it was not upright is a significant factor. The units typically sit in a warehouse. It may have "tempered air" not for the stored stuff, but for the workers. Then off into truck, train, and aircraft... all with potentially extremely low temp's. The warmer unit flows oil and refergerant down to the bottom of the coils. You get it, set upright and it may or may not come up to full room temperature before it is turned on. The oil/refergerant is viscus. The pump often does not have the power to move that incompressable fluid, rotor locks, amps surge, and blows the fuse. It would be wise to recommend 24 hours in a warm area to avoid this scenario. Then store it upright at all times. GJ