ADKCamper

Thanks for the link... my PD converter does not have the LI/LA switch. I could replace it with one that does. I've been debating whether it makes sense to move the converter out of the fuse/breaker panel to a separate device. This *might* be something like a Victron Phoenix Smart IP43 Charger so that I could control & monitor converter-based charging activity with the Victron app. Apologies for the thread creep...

Not sure if this helps in your situation, but I will describe our experience with a 20A GFCI outlet at our home. When plugging in our 2018 Elite to a GFCI'd outlet in our garage (using an adapter as OP has described), it sometimes but not always trips the GFCI. By the process of elimination we have deduced that this behavior is somehow related to the Progressive Dynamics charger/converter mounted in the fuse/breaker panel under the side dinette. If we turn off the breaker corresponding to the charger/converter, the GFCI no longer trips. I don't know if this behavior is related to some issue within the converter module itself, or if there's some "sneak current path" elsewhere in the trailer that is enabled when the converter is powered up. This issue does not arise when plugged into a 30A shorepower source as these are typically not GFCI'd (but may be at some point in the future as newer NEC changes related to RV shorepower connections come into effect). Our plan is to wait until our existing AGM batteries need to be replaced, when we will change to lithium batteries and replace the converter with a lithium-capable one.

Elite I, Gas engine Thanks for the TV summary!

We have a 2018 Elite with the same Cooper 235/65R16C tires as Golfnut, above. Spare is the same size. I don't have any actual measurements on the inside dimension of the spare tire cover. My recollection from the one time I had the spare tire cover off is that it fit fairly snug... unclear if it will tolerate a larger diameter tire without more careful inside measurements. I'm not ready to replace tires just yet, but a quick look-around suggests that most tires that support at least a 2500lb max load (each; +10% safety margin = 2750 lb max load each) are larger by about an inch, and sometimes more, than the above Coopers. I'm worried about wheel-well clearance and having to run a high psi to support the weight (which gives a *rough* ride). I don't have a good replacement plan yet...

We have similar issues with our late 2018 Elite I, with two differences from most of the Elite II configurations being discussed on the forum: There is very little clearance between the 2 hulls of the Elite I to route flex or solid ducting The furnace is under the forward side dinette seat, with one outlet blowing directly into the aisle (towards the refrigerator & entrance door) and the second outlet going through the adjacent wall into the bathroom low and to the left of the toilet. The return vent to the furnace is on the face of the forward dinette seat facing the space under the dinette table. I have read most of the referenced threads and have a tentative game plan that I will begin to implement over the winter: Install remote temp sensors in both rear corners near the water pump and the outside shower plumbing, and also low in the vanity area under the bathroom sink. My current temp monitoring system only has 3 remotes, but I might try to find & place a 4th of some kind under the sink near the kitchen plumbing. Add some vents with 12v fans on each side of the aisle under the rear dinette/bed, pushing some heated cabin air into these two plumbing spaces Add a return air vent (shielded against spray intrusion) from the bathroom into the space under the sink (which, with the bathroom door closed, should funnel some heated air from the bathroom into the space under the sink) Maybe add a return air vent from the space under the bathroom sink into the adjacent closet Add 2 vents to the closet, one high and one low as referenced elsewhere. Consider partially opening one of the kitchen drawers to allow some return air flow out from the space under the sink. We do have a small electric space heater, which helps save propane when we have shore power available, but the airflow is a little different from when the propane furnace is running. We are from upstate NY and don't usually camp in the winter any more (we used to do so in a tent), but we do encounter sub-freezing temps in the western states in the spring and fall "shoulder" seasons; especially at altitude. It seems like a little fine tuning of the airflow (which is almost non-existent now) should make a difference 🙂

Rear-wheel steering on a 3/4 ton pickup would be really nice to have, though!

+1 My wife has (2-3 year old) Oticon hearing aids with a USB-A charging plug, which works fine with the Blue Sea 2x USB-A outlets that Oliver was installing back in late 2018. I'm not familiar with what they're installing now. I'm not surprised that Oticon has likely upgraded to USB-C charging since then as its becoming much more universal. We also have several Anker 12V USB-A/C adapter plugs similar to the one Steve Morris has shown above, and second his recommendation for Anker USB products. I did a quick survey on the Blue Sea website, and could not find any USB-C flush-mount outlets from Blue Sea available yet. Those outlets are not difficult to swap out if you can find one from a quality manufacturer that has the same form factor as the factory installed units (thus eliminating the need to use the separate USB adaptor plug...). A USB-A to USB-C adapter would also work as Mike has suggested.

I use the same "augmented" diagram and valve configuration table as shown above. I have found it useful to label the valves with their corresponding numbers from the table, as they are not physically located exactly as the diagrams are typically drawn. The photo below shows my labeled valves (#1 thru #6) for a late 2018 Elite I configuration. Other years/models may vary.

Try this earlier thread on the same topic: HDPE "Marine Board" is good for some things, PVC "Foam Board" is good for other things...

We have stayed at the Hampton Inn in Franklin a couple of times when visiting Hohenwald, and it worked out well for us... Local tourist attractions are very personal choices. We have enjoyed the following: Cascade Hollow Distilling Co (home of George Dickel Tennessee Whisky). Small outfit, a little different from the Bourbon Distilleries in KY (have also toured several of those). Tasting afterwards. Tour guide was great 🙂 Kentucky Cooperage (ISC) tour, Lebanon KY - barrel making. Note the time zone change when driving there from Franklin. Mammoth Cave NP (as a day trip out of Franklin.) Nashville (Broadway) - we just did our own walking tour up & down Broadway, nice lunch with live music in one of the honky tonks (Rippy's in our case) Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum - Nashville, just off Broadway "Historic RCA Studio B" tour (runs out of the Country Music Hall of Fame... kind of run down, but interesting if you're an avid Elvis fan or interested in country music history National Corvette Museum (this is where the sink hole opened up & damaged several corvettes back in 2014 Natchez Trace - historic/peaceful/scenic drive as far as you want to go. There's also a few historic buildings with interpretive signs near the Meriwether Lewis Campground. You can walk on a section of the original Natchez Trace

Elk in a field along the roadside, Oct 2022, Orick CA

Rideandfly... Nice one!

Mule deer crossing a stream, taken from the Pa-Rus Trail in Zion NP last October... Heron, also taken from the Pa-Rus Trail in Zion NP

Thanks for all the great wildlife photos! Sometimes we get lucky, and other times we'll go an entire trip without either seeing anything, or not being prepared to take a photo in a hurry... Mountain Goats seen from the Needles Highway in SD

Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep (Ewe and Lamb), Badlands NP, SD

Bison in Custer State Park, SD last May (photos taken safely from our TV on the side of the road with a 120-600mm zoom lens) They were so much fun to watch it was difficult to move on...

If you can't get the 45-degree zerks to cooperate, something like the following 90-degree adapters on the end of your straight grease gun hose/fitting might work for you... https://locknlube.com/collections/greasing-accessories/products/locknlube-90-degree-grease-coupler-adapter# or https://locknlube.com/products/locknlube-simple-90-coupler?variant=8158561206327 Of course they're also available on Amazon 🙂 The width at the business end of the first adapter is about 1-3/16". The width of the 2nd "simple 90" adapter is about 2-1/16". The Locknlube site wants $16.99 for the first (left photo), and $10.99 for the second (right photo).

Galley drawers - we added a strap to retain our drawers... very similar to what JD describes. It works great. We also added a strap across the bathroom door; it would work its latch loose in transit and swing back and forth. We initially jammed a seat cushion between the refrigerator and the bathroom door when traveling, but the strap across the door about 1/2 way up (near the latch) does the trick.

Shades - we had some issues with the shades falling off when in-transit when we first picked up our Elite. Upon further examination, several of the windows had broken clips (only one side of the clip was there, the opposing side had broken off). We have been able to resolve this issue with a combination of actions: Replace all broken clips (Oliver sent us a handful of new clips) Be very careful how we press the shade frame into place, ensuring that both sides of all clips are aligned with the slot on the back of the shade frame Lower the tire pressure from the 80psi used at delivery More experience avoiding curbs and potholes😜 (still working on this one) Opening the shades while traveling, so that if one does pop off, the shade fabric is not damaged We have not had any shade pop-offs in quite a while now...

I've only been towing an Ollie for 5 years so more experienced owners may want to chime in, but in my opinion the answer seems to be "it depends". I'll explain... The Oliver is a smooth, nicely rounded trailer and is *generally* very well behaved on the highway... *assuming* a bunch of things like: properly sized & inflated tires, no excessive speeds, properly sized and equipped tow vehicle, load-leveling Anderson hitch (if indicated by your tow vehicle/trailer combination), neither trailer or tow vehicle are overloaded or excessively top-heavy, etc. That said, heavy traffic, bad weather, rough or slippery road conditions or cross-winds require more caution. Heavy cross-winds or extremely gusty winds can be dangerous on their own, and even more so if a large truck passing from either direction either adds to the "gust velocity" that the tow vehicle or trailer are exposed to, or temporarily shields you from the gusty winds and then you become rapidly "exposed" again after they pass. Slow down, stay focused on your surroundings and maintain a good grip on the wheel. If it gets too bad, find a safe spot to pull over until its safe to continue.

I have not messed with the door screws, but I have upon occasion replaced other screws with torx heads so they can be tightened without camming-out the phillips head. Two good sources for stainless sheet metal and machine screws/bolts in both inch and metric sizes are Bolt Depot ( https://www.boltdepot.com/ ) and Mcmaster-Carr ( https://www.mcmaster.com/ ). In some cases you can specify the quantity; in others you can only get the pre-packaged quantity. For small orders, shipping ends up costing more than the product 😞

I like the heated tank concept. I *assume* this is electric, but have the same questions as Rivernerd above. Interesting thought - for trailers with propane heat, I wonder if its possible to make double-hulled tanks, with the fluids in the inner tank, and the outer tank being essentially an air plenum that you run the hot air through on its way to the other end of the trailer. If the air around the (inner) tank is above freezing, the liquid in the tank will not freeze. If you didn't want to run the furnace output directly around the tanks, you could instead use a separate blower (either manually switched or on a thermostat) to cycle cabin air around the tanks and back into the cabin space again... assuming that the furnace would run as needed to maintain the desired cabin temperature. Very little additional electricity would be required (more 12v watts for slightly longer furnace blower run-times). This design would use slightly more propane to heat the trailer's interior to the same point, but you'd probably have warmer floors as a bonus 🙂

A couple of things we have discovered about first-come/first-serve BLM campgrounds... In some cases (we encountered this with some of the smaller sites along the Colorado River near Moab) you might want to pull over at the entrance first and walk the campground looking for open site(s) and sufficient space for a trailer turn-around before you drive in. This should not be a problem with larger / more open sites. For the BLM areas that charge a (usually small) fee and have identified sites - just because there is a "ticket stub" hanging on the site's post doesn't necessarily mean the site is currently occupied. Some campers will leave the site in the morning without taking down their stub from the clip on the post, even though that stub is now "expired". Check the actual dates written on the ticket stub.

15" Rims and Goodyear Endurance ST225/75R15 *seems* like a good match-up for the dual-axle LE2. I'm not so sure for the single axle LE... or maybe I just don't understand how this works. Starting with a 5,000 lb GVWR, ignoring the ~500 lb tongue weight carried by the tow vehicle and assuming all weight is evenly distributed, doesn't this mean that each tire needs to safely support 5,000/2 = 2500 lb? To do that with the 15" Endurance (load index 117) you would need to run slightly over 70 psi in that tire (70.6 psi by my math...). Kind of a rough ride on our rarely perfect roads and close to the tire's 80psi max. Also, some more conservative folks than I recommend a 20% safety margin, bumping up the 5,000 lb GVWR to 6,000 lb of support, requiring each tire to support up to 3,000 lb (which is above the 15" Endurance's max load). My 2018 LE has the now-obsolete 16" (Cooper Discoverer HT3) tires. Without doing an exhaustive search and/or verifying wheel well clearances, there are a number of ST (Endurance, Maxxis) and LT (BFG A/T KO2, Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac) tires in 16" LR-E1 sizes that will support a 2,500 lb load in the 60-65 psi range. The only issue is that the tire diameters run from 30.5" - 30.8"; bigger than the 2018 Cooper HT3 diameter of 28.03". Without measuring I'm not sure that any of the newer/currently available 16" tires will fit in the original spare tire cover on the rear bumper. I've only had that cover off once, and from memory the original Cooper HT3 was already a very snug fit. Hopefully I still have another season to figure out what I want to do for the next set of tires!

I finally was able to measure the size of the freezer compartment on our (absorption) Dometic RM2454: W=17",H=6",D=8" = 816 cubic inches = 13.4 liters. As mentioned Dometic is somewhat elusive with their specs, but they do claim the overall size is 4 cubic ft = approximately 113 liters. The Dometic and the 115 Elegance have *approximately* the same overall capacity, with a larger freezer in the 115 Elegance. The Nova Kool has a larger overall capacity, primarily by being somewhat deeper than the other 3, with a similar freezer size to the Dometic. To summarize a few of the recently mentioned options: Dometic RM2454: 4 cu ft/113 liters overall, 13.4 liter freezer, ~99.6 liter refrig (by extrapolation) Isotherm Cruise Elegance 130: 4.6 cu ft/130 liters overall, 6.0 liter freezer, ~124 liter refrig (by extrapolation) Isotherm Freeline 115 Elegance: 4.1 cu ft/115 liters overall, 32 liter freezer, ~83 liter refrig (by extrapolation) Nova Kool R5810: 5.8 cu ft/164 liters overall ,11.3 liter freezer, ~152.7 liter refrig (by extrapolation) As (almost) always, there are trade-offs to be considered 🙂