2008RN

Geoff, How did you mount, suspend the temperature switch above the fins so it could be moved easily. Did you mount on the tube above the condenser fins, or did you hang it off of the fan bracket? Thanks

I think I would remove the stopper, then pump some caulk down the screw hole and the level it off on top so it does not impede the draining of the tracks. What a Pain.

I am on my first repack of my Timken bearings after 13,073 miles and 14 months. I have noticed that the Front Axel bearing show they got a little warm. The rear axel bearings show no discoloration. I used CV2 grease which is a Light or Faded Red color see picture below. The front axel outer bearings are the worst with a darker areas on the bearings surface there is no pitting or galling. The grease in and around the bearing is a light gray color. The grease has not thickened at all. still the same consistency as the original gear. I had repacked the Chinese Dexter bearing every 6,000 miles, and never saw the darkening, but had pitting and galling on those bearings. I'm I over tightening the bearings. My Procedure for setting the bearings. 1. As I'm tightening the bearing I slowly turn the hub for the first 15-20 ft/lbs to make sure everything is seated. After that I no longer turn the hub. I finish by torquing to 50 ft/pounds per Dexter. 2. I then loosen the nut making sure the Hub does rotate at all. 3. I then I hand snug the nut, and then back the nut off about 3/32 of an inch (probably about 1/32 of a full rotation. 4. I lock the nut in place with the retainer. I check the hub and tire temps during and 50% of my stops, and always after coming dow a mountain pass. They are always within about 5-10 degrees of each other. The highest temps have been around 130 degrees and mostly running around 115-120 degrees. I use a bearing packer for the bearing and alway push through about 1/2 of extra grease so I know that there the bearing is full of grease. I putt about 1/8 of an inch of grease around cones and 1/16 in on the axel. I try not to over pack the hub with grease. After pressing the seal in place. I put about a 1/16 inch of grease on the inner surface of the inner bearing and pack a little extra grease between the seal and bearing. I do the same type of procedure for the outer bearing. After making sure the hub and outer bearing is fully seated by hand I add little each grease before placing the washer in place. There is also slight discoloration on the spindles where the bearings ride. This is consistent among all spindles, and there is no pitting or galling. I check the hub and tire temps during and 50% of my stops, and always after coming dow a mountain pass. They are always within about 5-10 degrees of each other. The highest temps have been around 130 degrees and mostly running around 115-120 degrees. Also I had my tires balanced about 18,000 miles ago and I always make sure the weight is still in place on the inner rim when the tires are removed. I have the Cooper Discoverer HT3 LT Tires, and just replaced them with new tires due to age (6.5 years). Lastly I do have the Alcan 5 leaf springs and am using the Dexter Shoulder wet bolts, to insure I can easily grease the bolts and the shackles and Ez-Flex moves without restrictions. Should I be worried about the discoloration. Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to included any information related to the Dexter assembly. This is the worst bearing sets. The other front axel the discoloration faded 1/2 way up the rollers. This is the CV2 grease. Thanks

I totally agree. During my intense cleaning this winter. I removed the bumper and slid the tracks around to get things clean. That was one of the first things I noticed that it was a leak point. Secondly the stopper clamps down enough on the track that it would probably that it would stop the flow of water out the weep holes. I have thought about leaving the stopper out and plugging the hole with chalk.

I don't know if it is going to help but I use a Dremel bit and increase the Drain slot height from about 3/32 to a little over 1/8' on both the inside and outside drain slots. I also put gutter "J" tracks over the windows, mostly to help the street side windows. We did have a couple days of rain in Yosemite in April, and no leaks. They weren't flooding rains though. There are other threads about window leaking, I also cleaned all tracks throughly inside and out. Good luck.

Wow, I have gone 70-80 days on our filters. I have never seen the my filters like that. You did get some bad water. We use two standard 10" x 2.5" cartridges. One is a 5 micron filter like yours, the 2nd filter is a 5 micron carbon. I usually change them out yearly. If we are going to be at home for more than a month. I empty the canister and set out the filters to dry. I did try a 0.5 micron filter but it dropped the pressure at the faucet. taking a shower was tough. The restriction is not as bad with the 5 micron filters.

Just got my Epoch Essential batteries. Been looking through all of the specs on the Epoch I found conflicting information on the torque specs. The Data Sheet shows 8-12N.m or 6-9 ft/lb and the User Manual: 20 to 35Nm or 15-25ft/lbs. Any input on what you guy have torqued bolts?

Interesting, but not interested. Oliver is simple, well designed for the space available. It is not full of gadgetry. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). I think I'm showing my age. SkyDream is just the opposite. The only thing they have in Common is they are made out of Fiberglass. Probably half the places I camp the deck would useless due to thing being in the way. Also in the Pacific North West (PNW) I would worry about leaks. Although when I saw the newest walk through video on the new LEII, I had reservations over the awning with the solar panels on top. It is great having that much extra charging power. I don't think the longevity of these flexible panels would come near the useful life span of the solid mounted roof top panels. Replacing the awning I'm sure would be very expensive. I have trouble getting the regular awning clean and dry in the PNW due to the 7-8 months of rain. When I do have the opportunity to roll out awning and clean and let it dry completely the Oliver and Awning ends up blocking the whole driveway. So it has to be a planned project. I do pack a small Stihl blower and a ladder so I try to blow off the pine needle/leaves/twigs off of the top before finally rolling it up for travel.

Or for the Milwaukee for over $152. It takes me 1 year to go through 1 can. Dust off on Amazon has a deal right now for 2 cans for $6.29. I paid $12.38 for the 2 cans in January.

I do not know who said this in a post about 6 months ago, but when I read it I was running out of canned air in the garage (I only use it on fine stuff like electricronics, other wise I use my air compressor). So I bought 2 cans, one for the old and one for the garage. I did see small hose about 1/8 inch with a valve on it to reduce flow that hooks up to a standard air compressor hose. but I didn't purchase it. might be nice for home instead of a can. But the can is nice and portable for working on stuff inside the house.

Well I had an interested 19 day trip to Yosemite, Arches, Canyonlands and dinosaur monument National Parks. I had 4 different failures. I hadn't used my truck in a month before the trip and I have an alarm system in the truck the uses a lot of energy communicating with me and the factory and it drew the batteries in the truck way down. I tried starting the truck a few days before the trip and the batteries were dead. I recharged the batteries and they settled down to 12.6 volts after the charge instead of 12.8v. Just for safety sake I took a 660 Amp jumper battery along, but never had a problem again with the truck batteries the whole trip. Now the AGM batteries in the Oli are just over 6 years old. I haven't had any problems with them, in fact last year we are out for more than 60 day total boon docking on them over half the time and they did great. This trip out they failed the first night at 3AM with an alarm going off after using 34 Amp/hours. I was down to 10.4 volts from a full charge.. I was using a CPAP and the furnace was on set at 57 degrees. I isolated and checked all 4 batteries. Their volts were within 0.1 volts total so it wasn't one battery taking them all down, they are all just tired. I was planning the Epoch upgrade next year, but Oli forced my hand. Luckily I packed the jumper battery and hooked it into the system at night and recharged during the day. We went down to 11.9 volts in the morning heating the olive oil back up to 65 degree to take the chill off. No more alarms going off. I figured that the jumper was 5 years old and was the price of a good lead acid battery. So if I fried the jumper on the trip it was not a big loss. The jumper battery is still running good and holding a charge. Here is the jumper batter hooked into the system. That took care of the first failure. I had been using the heated truck mirror at Yosemite. The last day at Yosemite they blew a fuse and I didn't realize it until we were a 200 miles away from the park and my auxiliary diesel tank pump wouldn't work (same fuse). We got to our destination with a 1/8 in the main tank. I shotgunned the problem after blowing a couple of fuses and found it was the mirror heaters. I disconnect the heaters from the circuit and then we could pump fuel from the auxiliary tank. I will find the short this winter when I have the time to disassemble the dash and doors to trace it down. That night we pulled in and my wife tells me the Fridge would not work on gas. O' no what next. It was late that night and we had hook ups that night, so I waited until morning. When I looked in the compartment everything was very dusty. So I start by physically cleaning out the lower compartment. with a windex and paper towels. After everything dried, I reset all the spade connector in the compartment. Next I took the shield off around the burner and wipe off around the burner and then used canned air to blow out the burner from the air intake holes then the outside of the burner and the rest of the compartment. I tested it out and the first 2 clicks I heard the 2 relays into the electric box click, then the gas solenoid click the flame started on the first click of the ignitor. Nice full blue flame and no flickering or yellw/orange colors. Wow was I happy! OK 3 failures, I'm done now for the trip. Right! Well not quite I had one more minor failure; I bought these white/Blue LED lights for the interior lighting, and one failed the next to the last day of the trip. It stayed on with the blue light. The only way to turn it off was turn off the main switch controlling all the lights. I am now planning a couple weeks of maintenance and upgrades to the trailer and truck. Planning on attacking the Colorado Rockies this summer during the hottest time of the year with lots of long hard climbs and some boon docking . I ordered battery wire and lugs to make cables and i'm going to order Epochs on Monday. I will do a fan upgrade to the fridge, repack axle bearing and check brakes, again. We still have the original brakes with 23K miles on the Oli , just want to make sure every thing is working correctly and checking wear on drums and shoes. Will also fix a few small items on the Oliver. I also have regular maintenance on the truck and the boost is down little on the turbo, and oil temp is up little. So I am taking the truck in to get the turbo boots checked for leaks and the oil heat exchanger replaced on the old Ford 7.3 engine. I know all of this info does really belong in this thread, but I did want to start a new thread about thing that happen. This is the first real major failures since I bought the Oli besides the window tracks overflowing with water.

I had up graded all my touch lights with the 7.3" over the kitchen and the 4.75" for the beds and table lighting. I had 22 days on the flight and I had one of the 7.3 lights over the kitchen fail. I touched the light to turn it off and it would not turn off. I only had 22 travel days on these lights. I wasn't real happy. I will replace the it again with the same thing only because we light the low light of the blue. If it happens again , I will try another solution.

When I took my Zirk’s out, I had to hold the wet nut bolt with a wrench, and then use vice grips on the Zirk head to loosen it up. The hex heads on the desserts just stripped out with me needless to say I had to replace all of the Zirk’s.

Looks pretty good to me, Combines both the greasing wet bolts and physical inspection of operations and rough cleaning without remove the drums. I have never removed a drum with sealed bearings, I have done many vehicles over my years that have the old style tappered bearing. How easy is it to pull the drums of the Never-lube bearings (sealed bearings)? Even if everything looks good physically at some point the drum needs to be removed to check wear of drum and brake shoes. The nice thing with normal vehicles that have sealed bearing they have brake calipers, pads and rotors, being able to check everything with external inspections.

I am getting close to upgrading to the epoch essentials 300AH. Planning on 2 batteries. Seems like they fit the batteries slide the best. I have a question. I was reading about when installing multiple lithium batteries they said all should be charged up up completely before the installing. Meaning each battery is completely full. I do not have a Lithium stand alone battery charger. So I got to thinking should I buy a separate battery charger for lithium batteries? Do I go with the Epoch that is only designed for epoch, or is their other good lithium charger that would work? I feel like an infant when dealing with all of the different manufacture specs for chargers. Epoch charger looks like it would only fit an epoch battery and nothing else. Thanks everyone, Bob