2008RN

Or possible mis-rated and/or poor quality 3.5K# Dexters spring packs.

My thoughts exactly!

This is what I used with the DC-DC converter setup. Expanded PVC Foam Board, White, 3/4" (0.75", 19MM) Thick, 12" W x 36" L https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09K2YR21N/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1 I used the 3/4" thick instead of 1/2" thick so I could have a few more threads on the screws holding things.

I always Assumed that Oliver used epoxy. It matches so well with the existing fiberglass epoxy that they use in the shell. They must use tons of the epoxy. When I installed my DC-DC charger setup. I used JB weld. I sand the fiberglass surface and mating Marine board with 60 grit sandpaper. I then roughly cross hatched both surfaces with either a angle grinder with .060 cutoff wheel, or used a dremel. I just wanted to make sure it was going to get the best possible adherence. Oliver's joints have been known to fail. I have had 2 joints fail of what Oliver did at the factory. I don't know if JB weld it any better than their epoxy, but the failed parts had smooth surfaces. It sure can't hurt to give the surface more to adhere to.

Wow, The plot thickens. I think we could make a Johnny Cash song out of this, trying to figure out what is on our "supposed" Dexter Axles.

if you need it right now, you can google "DYI neutral ground plug" or "DYI neutral bond plug" and make one today. All it takes is a screw driver, 120V 15amp plug, and 2" of wire (I used 12ga 20Amp)

@John Welte, The humidity content is horrendous here in the winter we had so many days this year with greater than 90% humidity. We have a 3 sided metal RV port with tarps for the doors, so direct rain/snow is not on the Oli. We also can keep the Oli plugged in full time. The outside of the Oli itself during the winter along with the cement floor and the inside walls of the port would get dripping wet with moisture from the humidity. The first couple of years I opened the bathroom vent, and then turn the Maxair fan on it's lowest setting and l had the blinds completely open leaving the fan run all winter. I learned from winter camping out here if we did have constant air flow the insides of the trailer would be wet. This last year, I was so busy working on the inside of the trailer, that I left a little electric heater set to around 55 degrees in the Oli and lock the Oli up tight, with all the vents closed. This year worked much better at lowering the humidity level in the trailer, although the electric bills were higher.

Ya that makes sense, greaseing the wet bolts has been a little bit of a pain on my Oli. I can get most to the wet bolts greased while it is setting on the ground, but a couple of them I had to jack up the trailer to remove pressure in order to get them greased.

@MAX Burner Fantastic documentation. I know I will be using it in the future. Thanks for all of the hard work.

My 2020 LEII also measure within a couple thousands of 3", and I have the same brake assembly as @mountainoliver.

Supply and demand, Honda supplies us with what they want and demand we buy it. Since they are "Honda" people will buy it, just like other big big manufactures like Apple. BTW, I own both Honda and Apple products, and sometime get frustrated with them both. But the quality is there.

I also have the D35 Label. Does that mean that I should not update to the Alcan 2,000# springs. I run between 6,300 and 6,500 on the scales. I would not mind that little extra stiffness. I replaced the original Monroe shocks this winter (3 were shot with 8,000 miles on the Oli) with Bulldog HD shocks. I haven't had a chance to take her out on the rougher windy 2 lane roads yet. Darn, I was really hoping that I was going to have the D52 axles!

I like that. After living in CO for 48 years, I have shoveled tons of snow in bright sunshine, and several times in shorts and snow boots. In Oregon we usually get only get 1-3 days of snow a year, and 240+ days of gray skies. I kind of forget what the sun looks like or where it is at. So, I don't have to worry at what angle the sun is to the trailer. GO Buffs

We have a pretty big problem with winter condensation with humidity often in the high 80s and 90s. We usually do not get below freezing much (except for last week). We crack the bathroom fan open, and turn on the Maxair to it's lowest setting. We also keep the heater around 68 during the day and 60 at night. We do end up wiping the inside window a couple of times a day.

I never thought about mounting at 90 degrees. The was a great idea for mounting the charger using that little space. I also like hearing about the real world experience. I am hoping that my test for an hour in a closed compartment, will be relevant in the real world. If I do have problems with heat, I could try opening the deck plate to see if I could get little air flow in there.

My project was little more expensive. with Victron dual chargers, wire, alternator, shunt and miscellaneous like Anderson connecters, buss bars, breakers, fuses, wire sheathing, battery shut off, and lugs, heat shrink, crimper... I think my total cost approximated $1900. I pulled the fuel tank to properly run the wire in the frame rail something RV solar installer probably would not have done. I Ran wire sheathing on all cable except the actual board with the chargers. Anything that had any rub potential was covered. I ran a jumper cable between the truck and Oliver so that If I didn't need to charge while traveling I just wouldn't hook it up. Also makes it clean when parking. The Official Anderson connectors are not cheap, (knock offs are available). My cost would have been a lot less if I knew ahead of time the new Victron 50Amp charger was coming out. I could have lived with the 50Amp efficient DC-DC charger. I planned on a max of 100 amps input from the truck to run the amps, with my testing I maxed out at 88-89 Amps. With the new 50Amp charger I would bet 60Amp max input would be need, and I would wire for 70 Amps. That would have cut down on all cost of virtually every item and probably cut cost by about $500. Just an FYI I bought 47' (x2) of wire to run from the front of my F250 extended cab with 8' bed to just aft of the of the Oli battery bank. I had about 2' extra of each red, and black wire. Also as a side note, I bought wire from battery cables usa. I got the extreme battery cable. Very fine wire like welding cable. double sheathing (hard intercore and flexible outercore. Also the inside Copper wire OD was larger than spec. I like the extra safety margin with slightly lower Ohms and more carrying capacity. I only thing is that on 1/0 to 4/0 wires it was almost a press fit( it takes force to put the wire in the lug. I just couldn't strip the sheathing back and put the lug on. I had to use a 2 step process.

Very Cool, Unfortunately I'm a day late and a dollar short. I had everything built a week ago besides the chargers added. I purchased the chargers last Friday, installed them Saturday and tested today. It would have simplified my whole design. Smaller wires, no fans, and simplified and smaller foot print. Here is what my install looked like. I epoxied a 1/2" marine white board to the wheel well. Attached everything to a piece of 3/4" marine board and then attached the 3/4" board to the 1/2" board. Space was definitely at a premium. My test showed each charger at 38Amps before warm up. After one hour one charger was 34Amps at 96degrees F, and the orther 32.5 amps @ 100degrees F. Victron rates the 12-12/30 at 104 degrees F. Anything over 104F the Amps decrease below 30 F. I have heard as low as 25 degrees F each pair of fans positive lines are connected to the Optifuse breaker. So I can turn off either of the chargers and associated fans from the other charger. This is the 1/2 base.

On my Oli I used the top of the wheel well under the street side bed. It was a nice large platform, I had to move the cable for the back dump valve a little. Main I un-taped the cable and pulled it out from the wall. it was a win-win the cable now has a larger arc and pulls/pushes much easier. I was disappointed in the mighty F250 alternator. It is suppose to be a 110A alternator. Max amps I could every reach was 75Amps. That was on a cold morning after the glow plugs had been on for 2 minutes (210 Amp) draw, and a 10 seconds on the starter at 850Amps. I only tested the new alternator once, but on a cold startup it jumped up to around 130 Amps, then dropped down to about 85 Amps for a while then started to slowly drop down. I found my Oli used, it was 9 months old. The nice thing, was If I was going to order it from the factory, it had almost everything I needed. Thanks for the heads up, Ours are just over 3 years old. knock on wood, they seem to all be working fine right now and do not seem to have any swelling yet. I have looked at some batteries, but haven't made my mind up yet, I had figured that I still had time. The Lithionics batteries seem really nice, the Cadillac of batteries. Boy are they expensive, As of about 6 months ago, I was reading about failures with battle born.

I boon dock, a lot more than I stay in a park with utilities . So being able to charge the batteries when traveling is nice luxury. Once I retire we plan being out for at least a couple of months once or twice a year. It is great staying a 2-3 days in once spot and then move down the road and being able to make a big dent in getting the batteries charged. I have been planning/researching this upgrade for over a year, and have spent 4 months methodically upgrading the truck and camper. I upgraded my alternator on my F250 Super duty diesel to handle the load. I have updated wiring in the truck; The alternator to one battery with 4/0 wire. The positive wire between batteries was upgraded to 2/0. I also upgrade grounds from battery to engine, frame and body to 2/0 wire. I ran 2/0 wiring to the Oli. In the Oli, I put in both Positive and negative buss bars and ran 4/0 wires from the batteries to the buss bars cleaning up the battery compartment and getting all connection in the bay. Long term I would like to move to lithium batteries. It sounds like a few of you think I'm crazy doing this. I could never afford to pay someone to do this type of endeavor. Fortunately some people have done this and were successful. I also have to thank Victron technical support for helping pave the way. @jd1923: I will try to get a hold of the manufacture for the specs on charging.

I am setting up two Victron 12/12-30AMP DC-DC chargers in parallel. I have a 2020 Oli with Zamp solar charger and Brightway AGM 6volt batteries in parallel series from the factory. I have look for specs on the Zamp charger, and the AGM for trying to setting up the the Victrons with the proper charging characteristics. From Docs on the Zamp I know the following: Absorption: 14.4V for 4 hours. Nothing appears to be to be configurable. The Victron sets the folowing for AGM batteries. Absorption 14.7V for 6 hours limit. float voltage 13.8. All values appear to be configurable. I have not been able to find any charging specs on the AGM brightway batteries. Any input on setting up the charging characteristics on the Victron? Maybe, I'am over thinking this, but I just want it setup as correctly as possible.

We will be staying home also. We have a 20 lbs bird. I will start at 1130PM Wednesday and doing a Citrus Smoked turkey. Happy Thanksgiving and May both your joy and stomach be full!

I was looking on line at the Rotozip spiral saw online. The internet came up with several cut-out tools and Dremel type tools. Are they all the same, or does one have better features that make it more suited to our application?

1. Taped off the whole area with painter's tape. 2. Drew circles with a compass. be very careful where you place the holes so you don't damage any thing behind it. 3. Drilled 4 2" holes at all of the cardinal points along the edge of the diameter. 4. Used a jig saw with a metal cutting blade to cut the diameter of the deck plate holes doing 1/4 circle at a time. Note, I cut the 2 deck plate holes and the Access door to the storage bay. I fried one whole blade, and dulled another. I wore an N95 mask and googles, and used shop vac to help suck up the fiber glass while cutting.

rich.dev thank you so much for the diagram. Better than the one that is on basement cover. jd1923, here is a picture of the deck plates on the Curb side. The forward deck plate is a 6" and the aft deck plate is a 8" which replaced a 4" deck plate that I had a hard time getting my arm any farther than my elbow. I bought the deck plates from West Marine. I like the lift handle. You lift the handle and twist the 90 degrees, and the deck plate comes right off. The deck plate are not water proof, but it really doesn't matter inside the the cabin. The only thing I didn't like was the color was off white. They said it was "white", but as you see they are not pure white. I can reach all 4 configuration valves from the forward deck plate. From the aft deck plate I can reach the hot water shutoff, the fresh water drain, and 2 of the configuration valves. Note that you have to change all of the valves by feel, but I have no problems reaching, finding and turning the valves.

There is a valve configuration sheet attached to the underside of the curb side access panel. I would like to get an electronic copy of this. I added two deck plates to the side of the bed so I can reach all of the valves under the bed without lifting the mattress. anybody have or know where an electronic copy is?