Rivernerd

Good suggestion. Oliver has already chosen to install Truma Varioheat furnaces in all 2023 models. I believe the improvement in cold-weather performance in trailers with that furnace are due to Truma's insistence on use of Truma's specified ducting and design, including the return air vent in the bathroom. But, our experience camping with our Varioheat-equipped Oliver in single digit overnight temps above 5000 feet indicates that additional improvements, including more insulation in critical areas and additional furnace return air vents, could move the Oliver toward becoming a true "4-season trailer" even in more extreme climates. I believe Oliver does care about improving the quality of its products as the model years go by, and so would welcome the input. In my judgment, the Oliver is already superior to Airstream's offerings, or we would own an Airstream. Such improvements may not cost much more during production, and yet could push Oliver even further ahead of its competition.

I had the same reaction to Oliver's $800 price for the backup camera. But then I thought through how I would run the wire between the hulls from the camera to the power switch, and whether I could feasibly install a power switch in the main switch panel, so the camera does not operate 24/7. I am pretty handy, but we ultimately paid the premium to have Oliver install the backup camera in our Hull #1291 during the production process. The work was nicely done. We were glad to have it during our 2000+ mile trip home to Idaho.

We boondocked one cold night in Oklahoma on our way home from Hohenwald a couple of weeks ago. We ran the furnace all night. By morning there were white flakes falling from the sky. The power drain on our 390 Ah Lithium Pro Package was about 15% (meaning the Lithionics app showed about 85% State of Charge on all 3 of our batteries that morning). Even though the next day was mostly cloudy, our batteries were back close to 100% State of Charge by that evening just from solar recharge. Our trailer, like all Olivers with lithium batteries, is not recharged by the tow vehicle alternator. While battery drain should not be an issue when running the furnace overnight for up to 4-5 nights, you should also keep tabs on your propane supply. We burned through about 1.6 gallons of propane every cold night. So, with the two stock 5-gallon propane tanks, you should be o.k. for those same 4-5 nights before getting your propane tanks refilled.

All 2023 Olivers come with the Truma Varioheat furnace. One of the 2023 demo models on the Oliver showroom floor has Truma AC, water heater and Varioheat furnace. The other 2023 demo has the Dometic AC, Suburban water heater, but the Truma Varioheat furnace.

It's not me! I was never licensed in Oregon, and am no longer licensed to practice law anywhere, having retired 5 years ago. But, before you even consider retaining counsel, I recommend you contact Oliver's Sales and Operations Manager Rodney Lomax. His email address is: rlomax@olivertraveltrailers.com. My impression, when I met with him personally about two weeks ago, was that he has a high level of integrity, and cares very much how Oliver is perceived by its customers. I recommend you offer the explanation found in my post above (that the gas line must have been connected to the Varioheat furnace by an Oliver tech during production, because only Oliver could have installed the gas line in the trailer) and politely ask him to intervene to get Oliver to cover the repair under warranty. I will be quite surprised if he doesn't get the problem solved for you, by Oliver, not Truma. Before contacting Mr. Lomax, I would buy the necessary wrenches (it looks to me like 3/8" drive 17mm and 19mm crowfoots will work in that tight space, attached to 3/8" ratchet extensions, and controlled by 3/8" ratchets). You may even be able to get an open-end wrench on one of them--you likely will not know until you try it. I would then hold the "bottom nut" with one wrench while tightening the flare nut with another wrench--carefully, a little bit at a time, until the leak stopped. This is the way brass flare nuts are commonly tightened. If you are not comfortable with that approach, then take it to an RV service center, and ask Oliver to pay the bill.

That fitting connecting the gas line to the Truma Varioheat could not have been installed by Truma. It must have been installed by Oliver when the Varioheat furnace was installed in the trailer, and the gas line, which was installed by Oliver during manufacture, was connected to the furnace. If the flare nut connecting the gas line to the furnace was not properly torqued, that failure was by Oliver. Did Oliver service pass the buck to Truma in response to your service ticket?

Ergo, there is no effective warranty on Dometic products installed in Oliver trailers. Oliver passes the buck to Dometic, which has no service centers that will work on Dometic products installed in Olivers, because Oliver has no dealers. A complete circle of coverage denial. As a retired trial lawyer, this gets my blood pumping. Although we have a Truma furnace, we have other Dometic products installed in our 2022 Elite II, including the cooktop and toilet. I am quite interested to hear Mike's response. Please report.

One consideration: Do the antennas, cell booster or WAN packages come with switches on the main panel by the entry to the trailer? The backup camera does, and that was a significant factor in our decision to pay the premium for Oliver to do the install. This gave us not only the switch, but the connecting wires already in place between the hulls. You might consider submitting an inquiry to your sales rep. For what it's worth, we opted not to include either the cell booster or the wireless WAN. Instead, we upgraded our Verizon cell package to included unlimited data, then used our cell phones as mobile hot spots. That system gave us internet access wherever we had Verizon cell coverage. But, of course, we did not have the bandwidth to stream data-intensive programming, like on the TV.

No filter. But there will be no pet hair in our trailer, because pets are not allowed. One reason we purchased a travel trailer is my severe cat allergy and significant dog allergy. The return air vent in the bath is 2" OD, the same size as the supply vents in the trailer. It just looks big in my photo.

No. We didn't want the communications add-ons you reference, but we did want the backup camera. For what it's worth, we paid Oliver's premium to install the backup camera because I feared the same issue you are now facing with regard to wifi, satellite and cell boosters: where do the wires go between the hulls, and where does the power come from? With a March, 2023 delivery date, it probably is not too late to update your order to pay the premium for those communications add-ons. Yes, its spendy. But then you will have the cabling and power supply infrastructure in place to replace any component that becomes outdated.

See this excellent post by John Davies for instruction on how to adjust "Nev-R-Adjust" brakes on an Oliver.

Did you check the adjustment mechanism on the bottom of the assembly? You should be able to back off the adjustment screw a bit to create more separation between the shoe and the hub.

We not only asked, but got lucky. We were also initially told "no," because there were no open, later, production dates into which we could be slotted. So I put in a request, advising that if a later production date opened up, we would be happy to defer delivery to get the Truma AC upgrade. When that later (September 29) production date became available (which meant a November 10 delivery date), Rodney Lomax called to confirm, and we accepted, even though it meant towing our new Ollie back from Tennessee to Idaho in November instead of September--when driving conditions in the west can be icy. Mr. Lomax also made clear that getting the Truma AC was not a sure thing, because it depended on that first shipment of Aventa units from Truma being received before production began on our trailer. That shipment date was projected, but not guaranteed. We understood the risk, and accepted it, knowing that we might be driving back to Idaho in icy conditions with a Dometic Penguin II AC unit instead of a Truma. As it turned out, the shipment was timely received (in this era of supply chain issues). We got the Truma AC and, despite an early winter in the west, and the delays in Hohenwald detailed in my report, ended up with a timely weather window. It allowed us to complete the trip home on mostly dry roads (but dealing with some cold nights with lows in single digits and teens at high elevations). Our first notice that the $3800 Truma upgrade included the Varioheat furnace came when we received an updated Deposit Receipt from Oliver in July noting that the Truma upgrade included the Varioheat furnace instead of the stock Suburban. At the time, we were focused on the Truma Aventa AC, and honestly didn't have a preference for either furnace. But, since the Varioheat furnace came as part of the package, we hoped it would be an improvement. For what it's worth, we did have some furnace ignition issues on cold nights at high elevation in New Mexico, Colorado and Utah last week, but we suspect it was the elevation (4800 to 6200 feet) affecting propane gasification, which probably would have occurred with either furnace. But, as noted in my report, we are pleased with the more robust ducting, and the additional return air vent that came with the Varioheat. I am sorry you are having so much trouble with your furnace, and apparently wound up with balance beads without the screened valve stems. I recommend you submit a service ticket to Oliver, advise them that you have had two stuck valve stems, and ask them to ship to you 5 of the Counteract filtered valve stems they mailed to everyone else who mistakenly got balance beads. Swapping out valve stems should be much easier than trying to remove all of the balance beads. In your shoes, I would have a less positive view of Oliver as well...

I have EZ lube fittings on my raft trailer. They are great for extending the time between bearing repacks, but I am not comfortable letting my wheel bearings go more than 2-3 years without a full repack, even with a shot of grease into the zerk every 6 months or so. I go by the old saying "Its' not the age, its the mileage." If your trailer only gets used 4 weeks a year, and is only towed 4K miles during those 4 weeks, I would be comfortable waiting to repack the bearings until I got to 10K miles or 2 years. There are pros and cons to Nev-R-Lube bearings. See this thread:

Thanks for the tip!

I adopted John Davies' turnbuckle approach with our new Elite II picked up on November 10, 2022. After camping 12 nights at various places in 7 states, and towing more than 2000 miles, I am pleased with the setup. At one back-in campsite, the whale tail ended up angled relative to the hitch ball. When reattaching the whale tail, I further loosened the turnbuckle on the "long" side, which enabled me to get the whale tail onto the bottom of the ball mount. Then I snugged up both turnbuckles, completing the process with Robogrips. IMHO, this is an additional benefit of the turnbuckle system. But, the turnbuckles don't fully replace the front chain extensions on our 2022 Elite II. They replace 10 of the necessary 23 additional links, so before leaving for Hohenwald, I bought two 15-link lengths of 3/8" chain to serve as chain extensions, to ensure that I had enough chain. And, yep, I now get to cut two links off of each chain, as they turned out to be surplus. Thanks, John, for the idea!

After I replaced the empty tank with our full spare, we had that same thought. So, we put the lever between the two tanks, so it pulled fuel from both. But, alas, it only made a little bit of difference. At 6200 feet in Cortez, CO, even with the system drawing from both tanks, it still took up to 10 "whumps" to get ignition at ambient temps down to 11 degrees F.

If you don't get a resolution with Dometic, I would submit another service ticket to Oliver asking them to get you, through their supply channels, a replacement control board, and walk you through how to replace it. I hope they will at least take those steps for a 2022 trailer still under warranty.

I would call Oliver back on Monday and ask them to lean on Dometic to find a service center that will repair your furnace under warranty. I find it unacceptable that the Dometic service center declined to do warranty work on a Dometic furnace because it is installed in an Oliver. All Dometic products are installed in trailers manufactured by somebody, i.e., Airstream, Oliver, Casita, etc.

The propane tank heater blanket available through the link below pulls only 50 watts (2.4 amps a 120V). So, you may be able to run it from your batteries, through the inverter, for many hours at a time. You could then recharge the batteries with a generator, which might only take an hour or two. https://arcticwarmers.com/product/cylinder-heater-warming-wrap-40-high-temperature-for-lp-tanks/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIr5rMhs7K-wIVE21vBB1uxg0PEAQYBCABEgJR-fD_BwE With our Lithium Pro Package we have 390 Ah of battery capacity. Conservatively figuring 80% usable capacity, at 24 amp draw (since the inverter requires 10X the amp draw), we could run the tank heater for 13 hours. Since we would likely only need to run the tank heater at night (say 12 hours per night in the winter), in theory we could get 1 full night (with no other amp draw) before generator recharge was required. Just a thought.

Could you run a generator ?

Our Elite II picked up 15 days ago came with a locking 30A, 25' power cord. But, we purchased a non-locking extension cord beforehand just in case. Since the primary cord Oliver supplies has a locking collar on only the trailer end (not the pedestal end), any extension cord does not need to have a locking collar--just a Ziploc bag to protect the connection between the primary and extension cords if it rains.

During our 7-day voyage from Hohenwald back to Idaho last week, we encountered overnight temps in the teens at about 5000 feet in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, at 6200 feet in Cortez, Colorado and at 4200 feet in Provo, UT. In New Mexico and Colorado, our Varioheat furnace sometimes took up to 10 tries to ignite, but it eventually did on each occasion. It took a few ignition attempts in Utah, but not as many as at the higher elevations. Each ignition attempt caused a "whump" sound that, at first, made us wonder where it came from. This did not happen either before or after those three nights, when we camped at lower elevations with overnight lows in the 20's, in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Idaho. We wondered if the combination of temps in the teens (it got down to 11 degrees F in Cortez) and high elevation inhibited propane gasification, as referenced by Topgun2 above. We noted frost on the outside of the tanks up to the propane level, but not above. Our short-term solution was to substitute our full spare propane tank for the one of the two that was low. This seemed to help somewhat, but did not make the issue go away. Were we planning a trip like the one you propose, we would definitely look into a propane tank heating blanket. You could draw from the one tank that is heated, then move the blanket to the full tank when needed. A quick Google search yielded this one from Amazon, currently on a Black Friday deal: https://www.amazon.com/Powerblanket-PBL20-Cylinder-Propane-Charcoal/dp/B00PKKHC2Y/ref=sr_1_3?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvfrLluvJ-wIVIRh9Ch3O9g27EAAYAiAAEgLP_PD_BwE&hvadid=410083089776&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9029558&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=1331052575274189197&hvtargid=kwd-591569910607&hydadcr=7466_11110449&keywords=propane+tank+warmer+blanket&qid=1669396665&sr=8-3 As these blankets all appear to operate on 120V power, I expect you would need to have shore power available, and carry a separate extension cord to connect the blanket to the outside 120V receptacle. We had shore power available at all three high-elevation locations, so the heater blanket would have worked for us. Good luck!

I have the Harbor Freight solid rubber chocks as well. But, I also use X-chocks. We have found that the X-chocks add some stability to the trailer, working together with the stabilizer jacks.

I hope the ones I ordered fit our new Ollie. One of the comments on Amazon advised they are "universal fit," but you never know until you install them. Mine are scheduled to arrive Tuesday. I will post if they don't fit....