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Jim_Oker

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Everything posted by Jim_Oker

  1. I find mine does this, and rather loudly, when plugged in and when the batteries are not wildly full. I think this is happening during the bulk charging stage and the charger w/in the inverter unit has a lot of current flowing through and so gets hotter and needs more cooling, though I haven't carefully documented at which SOC and battery voltage the fan does versus doesn't do its jet aircraft impersonation.
  2. In OK weather we prefer to cook more complicated meals outside. We've mostly used the indoor stove for simple tasks like heating morning coffee water though we have cooked a few multi-pan meals when it was raining outside. We tend to cook somewhat simpler meals while camping than when at home in any case. Would I love more indoor prep space? Sure. Would I make the necessary trades to get it (wider or longer trailer or slides or such)? No. But that's me/us. I'm presuming you have some decent sense of your own camping style from use of your current pop up trailer and possibly prior camping as well. If you haven't camped a lot and don't have a sense of the actual flow of camping for you guys, you may benefit from renting some trailers of different sizes for a year or two of camping to get that sense. Life is full of tradeoffs and only you can decide what you're willing to yield in exchange for what else. The Oliver's kitchen (plus dinette top and those little ledges folks have mentioned) is only marginally more cramped than my wife's and my first one bedroom city apartment and we made some pretty involved meals there. Eventually I'm sure I'll add a counter extension similar to what Overland has, but it's not way up there on my to-do list yet. I may also add the Lagun table setup similar to his, but I think that's even further out and I may never do this. Even the nifty folding table is just more stuff to carry around and move from here to there etc.
  3. Looks like a great trip. And that's awesome - I'm not shocked that there are repair folks in such places with stock on modern phone parts that typically need replacing. I wonder how many of them train up on ifixit.com (a great resource!!) My wife lost her phone recently during bike ride - it fell out of an open saddle bag somewhere along the route. She was going on a multi-day trip to Portland the next day, and the prospect of not having a phone was stressful before a trip. Which made us try to remember how it used to be. You know, before cell phones of any sort. Somehow we managed to travel!! How did we do that??? We started riding slowly back the way we'd come on the wrong side of the road. She was kinda on edge and not making the task any easier so I suggested she go ahead at a decent clip directly to the spot of the one stop she'd made in case it was there, and I'd work back to her. I found it a half mile later and then pushed and caught her right before she got to that spot - which was great as instead of her freaking more because it wasn't there I happily surprised her with a phone that just had one very acceptable hairline crack in the glass screen protector sheet.
  4. Maybe I'm overly indexing to experience driving our bouncy Ford camper van over very rough unpaved roads but I don't trust gravity to keep things from jumping upwards if not constrained from doing so by something more than their weight. On our last trip I stashed the microwave platter and the sink cover/cutting board under the twin mattresses at the front (ie the end toward the door) so they wouldn't slide under there in event of an emergency stop. We have the KTT mattresses which have plenty of weight to hold them down and have the Hypervent pads underneath which provided a nice soft-ish base. Like Susan we mostly avoid having heavy stuff in the upper cabinets while in transit (don't want to be top heavy) and we pack so as to minimize ability of stuff to shift around. We put trash in plastic shopping bags (we've saved up a hoarder level number of these 🙂 ) which when in use hang from one of these trash bag holders (with some duct tape on the inside of the part that goes over the door to limit scratching/scuffing) which we typically have hung from the top of the closet door (we camp with our dog so want the trash well above her reach; otherwise the lowest kitchen drawer of the aft set of drawers would be a nice and fairly out of the way option). But when we move we tie up the bag and bring it in our TV to toss it at the next available trash receptacle - often a campground dumpster, and the trash bag bag holder goes into a kitchen drawer. We carry drinking water typically in both 2.5 gallon supermarket type water jugs (often refilled at home or with giardia level filtration plus carbon for chlorine etc when on the road) and in one liter nalgene bottles which we have in the tow vehicle when in transit - these are the most heavy and potentially mobile missiles we have so we long ago figured out where to stash these so as not to have them smashing around.
  5. I'm at the looking stage also. A store near me has a Specialized Vado demo bike that fits me that I'll likely be trying for a day in the week ahead (they charge a rental fee that's applied 100% if you buy one). I'm hoping for something that's decent as an upright pavement bike as well as good for gravel (sometimes with rough bits). One thing I've heard is get a center drive (motor on crank not a wheel hub) so you can use the bike's gearing to help the motor do its best.
  6. FYI, I'm in Woodinville (and am happy to show ours) and when I was shopping the Oliver sales team put me in touch with someone who had theirs stored up near Snohomish/Clearwater. There are at least a few other Ollie owners scattered around the region.
  7. For his uses, it seems he's often moving to a new camp each night based on where he's shooting. And he likes having a low profile vehicle (Four Wheel Campers pop up) that he can take on some very rough 4wd roads and then sleep out where they lead. Everything is best for something at worst for something else.
  8. Ooh nice - thanks. I'll be checking that out!
  9. Yeah, me too. Hopefully others will weigh in. I'm not going to replace a functioning 3-way at this point but still I'm curious to know. The guy who told me they were not good enough for hot AZ weather is named Jack Dykinga, btw - he's a pretty sharp and grounded landscape photographer who is tuned in to the tech in his life fwiw (and incidentally a Pulitzer prize winner from his prior career as a press photographer). But that doesn't mean he's always right - just that I give some credence to such opinions from him. He does a LOT of camping in his truck camper in service to his work and passion of photography across western north America.
  10. I've done fine with the 3-way absorption fridge (Dometic) on our camper van for nearly twenty years. But I've mostly camped up in the cooler northern climate, and I've only ventured to the southwest in shoulder season when the highest highs were verging into the low nineties (at which point I booked it west to get out to the 60s-70s of the northern CA and southern OR coast 😄 ). But I talked with a guy who does a LOT of camping around the desert southwest in all seasons in his Four Wheel Camper on his truck. He claimed that the absorption fridges would just not keep up in the hotter weather he sometimes camps in - he has a fairly efficient compressor fridge in his Four Wheel Camper and says his solar panels on the roof nearly always keep his batteries topped off. I will say that when I made the aforementioned beeline from AZ to northern CA, I crossed the Mojave desert in fairly hot temperatures and the fridge did NOT keep up (granted I was driving and running it on wimpy DC as the pilot light on that fridge blows out at anything over about 25-30MPH) - it got fairly warm in there by evening and I tossed anything like mayo or meat that can't take more than a few hours above 40-ish according to USDA etc. So I'm wondering - some of you clearly camp a bunch in hotter parts of the country. Does it ever get so hot that your 3-way Ollie fridge doesn't quite keep up?
  11. BTW one other thing that might be worth asking the shipper to do for you if you decide to hire someone to deliver it for you is to set the tire pressure lower than 80. There's much discussion about this on this forum but I think Service even now recommends significantly lower tire pressure so I'm sure you can get a decent pressure reco from them and have them just set them that way for you before delivery. I did not ask and sure enough mine arrived with 80PSI cold temperature reading. Fortunately the only consequence I noticed was that the lines on either side of the pump had loosened enough that my trailer got a nice shower under the curbside bunk when I first used the water system. It was a quick fix to just open the bunk and hand tighten the connections, and perhaps it would have happened even with the lower pressure. But it sounds like you reduce odds of wiring/plumbing/blind mounts/riveted lights etc coming loose if you soften the ride with more appropriate pressure than the max rating of the tires.
  12. We have yet to encounter that issue. Possibly having mounted it to the rear side of the storage tray rather than to the tongue has helped, or perhaps we'll see more of this when we spend more time on dirty wet roads.
  13. I used painted cowboy in December 2020 to tow mine to my house in Washington state and they did a fine job. I washed the frame soon after it got here but I know I'll be subjecting it to equal or more abuse in coming years. Family issues made this the best choice for me and I'm happy with the choice and the tradeoffs. But I view my trailer as an expensive piece of recreational equipment and not as a collectible classic vehicle. We have had no more issues than I see owners who towed theirs home from the factory having when they're too far to go back to Hohenwald for quick fixes so missing the shakedown cruise wasn't costly for me (and I am just familiar enough with the classic RV systems to have been OK w/o the in person orientation to the trailer albeit with a few email exchanges with Jasen E et alto get some basic questions answered). Maybe I'm just lucky but that worked fine for me. If your delivery is in a freezing time of year be sure to have them winterize the water system after they do their test of it and before it's shipped to you!
  14. And here's a review of the Shurhold from Practical Sailor magazine
  15. BTW, this is the type of polisher I mentioned above for which I did not feel confident I would not damage the surfaces I would be using it on. Dewalt Rotary Polisher - these make jobs like polishing go faster but the tradeoff is that if you linger a bit (even potentially when changing direction) you can do some damage. If I had some junky fiberglass that I didn't care wildly about doing a lot of practice on and potentially messing up I might give one a go but I don't so I won't.
  16. I have used a Shurhold 3100 Random Dual Action Buffer https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002OIBRCQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_19J1WK7NKYKSDPE8478N?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 to polish off the oxidation from a fiberglass camper van and then also to buff the paste wax which I applied by hand with a soft pad. I thought about getting a single action Dewalt buffer but decided I was likely to burn my gelcoat with that. I'm just not practiced enough with a buffer to be confident with a super powerful tool that works very fast
  17. No but I built a couple of Pygmy kayaks (they're based in Port Townsend, WA) which was a rewarding project. They use stitch and glue technique with marine plywood, and the result was a pair of very seaworthy, light, and pretty boats.
  18. We haven't had either issue (and ours is indeed mounter vertically so as to make it tough for any water to get into the open end of the plug)
  19. Interestingly, I checked my board which is in a trailer delivered in December 2020 as I'd read of issues and had seen a suggestion to pull it out and apply conformal coating. The board on my unit has some sort of clear coating over all the electronics on both sides so I assume it was treated with conformal coating at the MaxxAir factory. Perhaps they got tired of doing warranty replacements of the board...
  20. Ours is working fine. I used 3M VHB tape to mount it to the cargo box instead of bolts. I used the primer that 3M sells for the tape on both the plastic holder and the metal cargo box. It's been holding up quite well thus far. It is a nice low-stakes test of using VHB tape on the outside and w/o any caulking to protect it - 3M says this is usable "indoors or outdoor" and that it "Creates a permanent seal against water, moisture and more."
  21. The main selling point for me was not having to spend fresh water on each flush. Even when boondocking in places like the desert southwest it's better to be taking your poo back with you than to dig catholes and poo in them (there are more and more areas down there where that's now officially a no-no and even in other areas it's just good LNT camping since the soil you dig that cathole in tends to be fairly sterile i.e. no bacteria to break your poo down unlike up here where I live on the wet side of the Cascades). So having the compost toilet for sure significantly extends the time we can go between being at fill/dump stations.
  22. I try not to handle them! 😉 But seriously, though I don't have a ton of time in yet with the compost toilet we have been out for a few weeks on end with it including some of this sort of fun. We didn't have a long enough bout going into our toilet to have to add any more composting medium ( moistened peat moss or coconut coir) which is what the manufacturer recommends if the hershey's squirts make it overly wet in the compost bin. Any "overspray" that hits the bowl is pretty easy to clean with a few spritzes of the water/vinegar solution that's recommended for bowl cleaning and a few wipes with TP that you can toss down into the bin. Thus far I'm a fan. I did get a squatty potty step which I'm going to scribe and cut to fit against the toilet so I don't have to go on tiptoe to have my feet touch the floor. But we've had no smell other than a little waft of compost smell (earthy - no different from a yard waste compost bin smell) when opening the toilet to get out the urine bottle or empty the compost bin. I add water periodically while in storage and also spin the agitator when I add the water. We last camped in mid June, and there is about two week's worth of poo and TP from the two of us. The TP is mostly just gone now, and the volume dropped back down to very close to what it was right after I added a fresh load of moistened peat moss. Right after the last 9 day camping trip in June the level was maybe two inches above the axle of the agitator and now it's back down to just below the axle. If you let it dry out in storage you'll end up with some brown dust on the floor and in the vent hose. No biggie but also easy to avoid if you are near where you store the trailer. Otherwise just dump the compost before storing. I like saving on water and not having to deal with dumping terribly often - looks like maybe if we did three weeks straight we might want to dump the compost bin and add fresh peat moss/coir. The pee bottle obviously needs more attention - every 2-3 days regardless of volume I'd say to avoid letting it get kinda gross (which you'd only notice when dumping it but still). But it's easy to dump/rinse/replace.
  23. He also made Endless Summer - also quite a classic!
  24. I'm guessing carbon deposits aren't the issue but worth looking - while you're at it you can check the flame color etc as described in the manual
  25. Good question - please post back here if you find out the answer! I've seen some comment on some RV web forum about adjusting the spark gap or some such, to be done by qualified service folks according to said comment. I don't know if that applies to this model or not.
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