routlaw

Lot of good points made here, have not thought of putting TV in neutral to let it settle but on more than one occasion have discovered there is a tension between TV and Oliver based upon how the last movements went, usually from backing up with a significant turn. What I always do now is take the tension away from the two by pulling forward usually a few inches or a foot max will do while straightening the TV front wheels. Some ground can be difficult to read the slope certainly and in this case front and back chocks work well. Like a few of you I have always taken a big rubber mallet and pound the crap out of those things so they are in tight both for rubber chocks as well as the Anderson leveling blocks. As for the X Chocks the company warns they are not meant to hold the camper in place, only to stabilize it once setup claiming the device is not strong enough to hold most campers steady. That said I have no doubt a lot of people use them in this manner. Good luck in the future

FYI, logged into my account yesterday and it did state there would be a $3.50 monthly charge. Tried to spend mine yesterday but it was declined due to an incorrect PIN #. What a racket by the banks.

I hear you, time to spend it for sure. Had no idea this was developing

Just checked this morning to view the amount on my Oliver debit card, and found the new institution has a month service charge just for the money setting in this account which is apparently $3.50 per month. What racket. Oh well. Thought everyone else might want to know if they are invested in this situation.

Well now I am setting on the edge of my seat waiting to find out the true engineering intent for these cross braces. Maybe Oliver will share with us some day.

That downward sag is about the same as on my Oliver too and as others have pointed out these are C channel not L channel as I previously referred to. Regardless the H2O heater surely can't weigh so much with only 6 gallons of water and maybe another 20 lbs for the actual heater itself. Mystery to me why so much more structure in this one area and yet so many still break. Still nothing from Tech support.

One could come to that conclusion but there are still cross braces under the fresh water tank which could also fail under the right conditions.

Good luck, wonderful place to travel to. Have been on that road a number of times and sometimes it's terrible and once or twice fairly smooth sailing for a gravel road at least. Maybe you'll hit it just after a fresh grading.

Another update for those interested. Heard back from tech support on my ticket this morning asking for photos which I forgot to initially send. Uploaded those, received a quick reply that all info would be forwarded to the higher up engineering folks and that the ticket would be closed. Not much really to go on, oh well. In the meantime, after considering another post earlier on, apologies don't recall who posted it, but they are correct the fresh water tanks are quite a bit further forward than this one doubled up L channel supports. Its curious that all of the people who have had these weld breaks are at the same place, same brace and yet have nothing to do (directly) with the support of the heaviest item the water tank. Why did they not use a square tube, instead of stitch welding two L brackets? Why is there so much apparent weight distributed at this one point? I'm baffled. Thanks

Interesting concept and good question. In the meantime have not heard back from Oliver on my ticket.

Yes and where the fresh water tank apparently presents the heaviest load.

Submitted a ticket first thing this morning. No response yet of course.

What does EBITA mean? For over 40 years I have been a professional photographer and in that time worked for a number of companies mostly in the outdoor recreation market. In that time many of these companies have sold to other larger entities, actually everyone of them as I think about it, and not a single one of them still exist to this day except for one. Most of them did not last more than a year or two after merging with a larger corp. Corporate America is littered with such mergers and acquisitions too. A close friend of mine, a retired corporate attorney, worked on cases like this and told me this is how and where many companies go to die. Not predicting this about Oliver, but worth considering assuming the long range goals are to sell the company. For me given that I live 2000 miles from Hohenwald it will have little to no effect. Apparently one of their new service centers is Bretz RV and Marine in Missoula, MT. I’ve been there on several occasions but still a 3 hour drive, yet this is the first I have heard of them as being an exceptional RV dealer and service center. Bretz comes to Bozeman periodically to do dog and pony shows with their products, but not sure I would place them in the same sector with Oliver. For those of you who are considering selling their Olivers on the used market my guess is your travel trailer just reduced its value overnight by at least a few grand and perhaps a lot more. Something to think about.

Good point, thus far I have not contacted Oliver about this but your advice is well taken. I will add this in all fairness, we have owned this TT for 9 years, some 25K miles and driven many backroads in that time and this is the first time we experienced this failure. However I still stand behind my previous comment, this is a poor design for its intended use. Like you we also camp most of the time where fresh water is not available, and just as important its deep backcountry for our adventures which requires gravel backcountry roads. Thanks

Likewise in over 9 years with our fixed panels have never run out of electricity or not able to get back to 100% SOC. However our Lead Acid batteries do appear to be at the end of their life and will need to replace those probably this year and most likely with Lithium. We have camped in rain, cloudy and over cast, you name but still get to 100% every day. For the trouble one would go to creating tilting panels and for only a few degrees just don’t see it being worth the trouble. Hope this helps