routlaw

With a Tundra I seriously doubt you will need the WDH, I certainly don't feel the need for it with out F150 but like you was a bit concerned early on before taking delivery. If nothing else perhaps on delivery day you could hook up with out the Anderson and take the Oliver for a spin in the area to see how comfortable it feels to you then make your final decision based upon that. Regardless good luck with your decision and travels.

For everyone planning on trips to Glacier please look at my post under campgrounds thread. There is a large fire on the east side of Glacier near St Mary's Lake. More info there. Feel free to PM me if you need more info.

I know that a few of you Oliver owners are planing on trips up to Glacier National Park soon. Unfortunately a large fire has broken out on the east side around St. Marys Lake. Both campgrounds are close on this side, that being Rising Sun and St Mary's as well as the lodge at Rising and the Visitors Center at St Mary's. From what I can determine the situation is bad enough that most of the east side of the Sun road is closed and a few evacuations have occurred. Feel free to PM if interested in alternate travel plans within the state of MT, be glad to help if I can.

PM sent, be glad to discuss your routes and travel plans.

Bill we are right on I-90 which presumably would be your route heading down to Cody. By all means PM me be glad to help if we can. I have to ask though why you chose the Highline (Rt.2) across MT. There are dramatically more scenic routes to Glacier and I would be glad to share them with you if interested. Regardless I hope you have a great trip. We have spent lots of time in and around Glacierand more than willing to lead you astray in that country.

Good input Rob. My Avalanche must have weaker springs than your F150 because it drops about two inches when I hitch up. The WDH corrects this and that is the main reason I continue using it. I am going to look into some helper springs because I sure would rather not go through the extra step of hooking up the Anderson. Perhaps, but it is worth noting my F150 also drops. Never measured it but once I am hitched up the truck sits visually level and without hitching the F150 has a noticeable rear end rise as do all trucks. This is most likely from the design figuring the vast majority of trucks do get used for some towing. However this may or may not apply to your Avalanche. We've all seen trailers that either point noise down or up due to incorrect hitching setups. We did make some changes however at delivery day in order to accomplish this by simply reversing my existing hitch upside down and flipping the ball at the hitch, otherwise the Oliver would have been very nose down. Don you might also want to check in with the Fiberglass RV forums if you haven't already. Lately there has been a lively discussion regarding tow vehicles WDH hitches and as you might guess opinions are all over the place. I suspect your Taureg will do well and w/o a WDH.

Don allow me to throw my two cents worth in though my tow vehicle is a considerably different than yours. We use an F150 with Eco Boost engine and do not use a WDH nor do we feel we need it. As others have stated these TT's tow extremely well. Perhaps just as important we have had a few emergency maneuvers where the Elite II performed very well. Coming back from Glacier Nat Park a couple of weeks ago traveling down highway 287 in MT an older style jeep decided to do a u turn right in front of us from the opposite side of the road. This is a two lane yet major highway in MT. There was a string of traffic behind me perhaps half a dozen or more that did not allow for hard braking IMO. At the time I felt my only course of action was to literally veer left into the opposing lane of traffic which thankfully was empty while apply as much brake as possible without creating an accident. It worked and I did not rear end or slam into the the jeep. Drunk drivers on the 4th of July. Most importantly the Oliver did not sway or get out of control during the quick maneuvers. On our way back from TN with our new Oliver traveling up I-15 and near Pocatello, ID an 18 wheeler decided to move over into our lane as we were passing on a large uphill climb. The semi was going quite slow for some unknown reason. This time I hit the brakes hard, moved over into the shoulder of the interstate as far as I could go while laying down on the horn. Driver finally figured out he was screwing up and got back into his lane. But I'm literally going down I-15 driving on the hash marks and beyond wondering if the next move was to ditch the entire affair to avoid colliding with the semi truck. The Oliver stayed put just where it was supposed to. My wife nearly had a coronary that day. For a brief period we were both thinking our entire affair was about to implode, tow vehicle and camper. And finally a few days before the previous episode traveling up I-27 from Lubbock to Amarillo we got into some headwinds the likes of which neither of us have ever seen on road trips. We'll probably never know the force of these winds but my guess is they were from 50-80 mph. Felt like we were in the dust bowl days, with a couple of hours of white knuckle driving, yet once again the Oliver did very well. I would be lying if I didn't say there was not some motion behind us while towing but it was never ever swaying out of control. Not even close. We were amazed and could not have hoped for better performance. At the end of the day only you can determine what you feel comfortable with towing. In the meantime hopefully these experiences will provide at least a modicum of knowledge to help evaluate your needs. More importantly I hope the heck no one else here goes through them. Trial by fire?

Bill, Debbie We are right on the way on your trip out west. Feel free to stop by be glad to show you our Elite II and give you some ideas on great places to camp in the area. We just got back from a week and a half from up in Glacier too which is only a half days drive ± from our house.

12 String, can't answer your questions exactly but will add we had a similar issue with our back window initially after pick up back in early March. While we haven't had issues with leaks over the table we did have some water running down on the inside of this same window. Turns out the sealant/caulk that is sandwiched between the window frame and camper body had hairline cracks across the top. It took me hours and a few tries to figure this out. Eventually I applied some high quality silicone caulk across this seam which seems to have fixed it for now. However I do not have the gap you seem to have pictured below. My personal opinion is the egress type of windows are a joke anyway. Don't know if you ever tried to open the thing this way, let alone crawl out of it but can guarantee by the time you did this you could have raced in and out of the camper main door about dozen times in the same time it would take you to get through this one window. And I'm a small guy in fairly good and flexible shape. I don't fault Oliver for this, in fact legally they probably had to install the darn things or at least for their various certifications but if I were replacing one it would not be the egress type of window thats for sure. In your case however if you're getting leakage over the table even at the back side it would imply to me the leak might be coming from another area, i.e. AC or something alone those areas. Anyway good luck figuring this out.

One other comment I forgot to mention on this last trip to Glacier. From our home there are two mountain passes with climbs of 1500 ft on one and over 2000 on the other both on I-90 the last with a very steep grade. Most of our highway speeds were at 65 mph, but occasionally on the secondary two lanes 55-60 mph depending on traffic and road conditions.

Dave that is not a misprint. Ford makes two EB engines, the 3.7 L and the 2.7 L that was just introduced this year for the 2015's in the F150 line. Granted it sounds small, until you drive one. These things will pin you to the back of your seat if you put your foot in the pedal, like right now. Ford torture tested this engine before introducing it in ways most companies would never think of. If you do a you tube search for this you'll find at least half a dozen videos of various torture test done to this engine. Where they get the torque and horsepower is the dual turbo chargers employed and this provides a power/torque curve more similar to diesel engines, only with a lot more pep. The 2015's have been fine tuned a tad more still providing yet a touch more power. I took one for a test drive back in the spring and as much as I like my 2013 the 2015's really took it up another notch in performance as well as interior fit and finish. Below is a link to a to a tow test with the smaller 2.7 L Eco Boost against the RAM 1500 with their 3.0 L diesel and the Chevy 6L V8 (I think). The 2.7 L pretty much ate the RAM 1500's lunch in tow power and outperformed the Chevy though not quite with the same edge. Don't get me wrong, both of the other trucks are very nice trucks, not knocking them at all but when it comes to brute force towing these eco boost engines are hard to beat unless you have a larger diesel. If you can get past all of the Ford hoop-da-la promotion on the video its still a very impressive feat under conditions far more extreme than you would ever encounter towing an Oliver. http://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/gallery ... FS8536000/ Let me know if you have any more questions.

Our TV is a 2013 F150 3.7 L Eco Boost with the 3:31 gear ratio. The truck is a Super Crew Cab long bed. Suffice it to say this is not a light truck with all the extra metal. There have been no modifications to the truck other than changing the factory issue tires to Michellin LTX M/S 2's. We have just over 27,000 miles on this truck and thus far has been faultless, providing enormous amounts of power and torque when needed, able to pass semi's going over western states mountain passes with ease. As for problems with the Eco Boost engine likewise I have heard of a few issues too but am inclined to believe they are a vocal minority. And while we have all heard anecdotal stories of such and such a vehicle going for hundreds of thousands of miles with no repairs truth is very few vehicles of any brand make it to 120,000 miles without some sort of major repair or issue. We just returned late yesterday from a trip to Glacier NP as well with total trip miles of 1453 averaging 15.6 mpg, towing we were getting between 12-13 mpg and about 19-20 without towing driving the arduous and steep and often windy Glacier NP roads. It is worth noting however we also brought both of your 14 Ft kayaks along that create considerably more wind drag and those boats stayed on the truck rack system throughout the trip unless we were paddling of course. Picture below for illustration. It is worth noting we had some head winds on the way back, not heavy but enough to affect gas mileage to some degree. Our previous and first trip out was a month long excursion after picking up our Oliver on Mar 3rd. While we did not bring our kayaks along for this trip we did have our road bikes stashed in the truck bed. This initial trip of approximately 6600 miles total from MT to TN to pick up, then down through the Gulf Coast states and across the country through TX, NM, UT, ID and back to MT gave us and average of only 14.5 mpg but under travel conditions that could only be describe as terrible. We battled torrential rains and flooded roads almost constantly, and extreme head winds at times especially going through TX just missing a tornado over the OK state line or so we were told. That day we only got 8 MPG on one tank and 10-11 mpg on another, but otherwise towing through the gulf states driving 60-65 mph when the weather was good gas mileage was in the 14-15 mpg range. Its unlikely we will ever see those numbers here in the northern rockies however. Hopefully this helps.

Stan, PM sent

I concur with trumpetguy on this issue. Likewise we had two things that had to be dealt with the next morning, one was a loose vent cover cap, the other was some additional solar panel programming that must have been forgotten. The delivery takes pretty much all day long too, so camping at Fall Hollow while not being the most exciting campground really does make sense for a first night out. Traveling back to the plant for some 60 or 70 miles would not be nearly as efficient should something need to be dealt with. Regarding the WDH. While we did consider it our decision was to forgo the use of one and have no regrets. Its been said many times that the Olivers towing capability is not like any other TT on the market. After our pick up date we stayed on the road for the rest of the month of March with the entire trip totally 6500 miles of which about 2/3rds or more was towing. We averaged 14.5 MPG for the entire trip in our F150 Eco Boost and considering some of the horrendous weather (heavy winds and heavy rain) we got into felt this was not too bad. But the point is at no time did we feel the Oliver was not towing well, or secure, let alone swaying, bouncing or otherwise creating a safety hazard without the WDH. And at least twice we had to make what I would call semi-emergency stops or maneuvers. The Oliver stayed put and handled well. The scariest was our last day out as we were returning home where a large semi truck just south of Pocatello, ID on I-15 decided for what ever reason to move over into our lane just as we were directly beside him smack dab in the middle of the trailer. I literally slammed on the brakes, hit the horn repeatedly, and made an emergency maneuver completely into the shoulder where the hash marks were embedded to wake up sleepy drives. Any further and we would have been in the ditch with a totaled camper and pick up truck. Again the Oliver w/o wdh performed flawlessly. Not trying to talk anyone either into or out of using one its a very personal choice but thought the additional POV and info might be helpful, which hopefully is.

Great that your TV charging system was able to keep up with the 12 V demand. Its my understanding these types of fridge draw about 12 amps ± when running on 12V. On our month long trip after pickup we just kept the fridge on auto mode, and let it decide which power sources was the most appropriate. It could be that while traveling down the road it automatically switched to 12 volt vs propane. It is worth noting not once did your gas go out while traveling and given the wind we encountered not to mention the way out of level hill climbs and decent's it certainly had every opportunity to do so. Leaving Weatherford, TX we headed into SW winds across I-20, but once we turned north to Lubbock and then onto Amarillo we were hitting what had to have been some 50-70 mph winds dead on from the north. Felt like driving through the dust bowl days with a fog of dust and low visibility with plumes of dust reaching way into the sky. Temps dropped from 87º down to just over 40º within about half an hour. Its not something I would ever want to repeat but have to say the Oliver hung in there towed as well as could be expected and the gas (pilot) did not go out amazingly enough. Gas milage dropped to 8 mpg during this leg. Robert had warned us about those clips in the pantry so we never loaded it with heavy stuff. Good fix you came up with. Have not had issues with the drawers yet, but all of the clips that tie and strap the solar cables to the panels came loose during the trip. My guess is the horrendous head wind we encountered in TX is what snapped them loose. Waiting on replacements now. Sounds like a great birding place down there.

Steve in some states, probably most, it is illegal to have the gas turned on while going down the road. But I suspect the majority of people do this anyway, and of course we can question the validity the additional safety factor with the gas off vs on. This argument came up awhile back on the FGRV forums as well, with opinions as you might guess all over the place. We have a friend who is on the local Search and Rescue team and if there was anyone whoever had a safety consciousness its this guy, and even he travels with his propane on. Since picking up our Oliver we do travel with the gas on and the fridge being powered by the propane too. Don't know how many have been in cold with these trailers but heaven forbid you trying to pry those rubber locks loose when its cold. Rubber at 70º is way different than rubber at below freezing. Its also worth pointing out that a good many TV's do not produce enough amps to keep the fridge cold on the 12 volt system too. Hope you had a great trip Stan. Cottonwood is a nice lithe town.

Bummer about the MW. We haven't missed it all and do enjoy the cabinet space for other things, i.e. coffee and tea paraphernalia, plus you have the added benefit of yet another 110 AC outlet. Actually we don't use a MW in our house anymore, got rid of it years ago, and put a toaster oven in its place which gets way more use than the MW ever did. Should you put a small toaster oven in this compartment for storage you'll definitely want to take it out to use, those things do get hot.

Thanks Sherry, and yes this is cork that I get from AmCork.com down in Houston. They have some great colors and textures for their wall acoustic tiles. The trim is Pecan/Hickory left over from our kitchen cabinets with but with a gray stain to more or less match the flooring that being a weathered wood look. Will try and get some close photos of that soon too.

Just a quick and dirty look at the general interior, working on some pano's for in here as well. You can also see the corner of one overhead storage cabinet door that is a work in progress. We would like to eliminate some if not all of the mirrored doors in the overhead. Thanks for looking. Rob

We opted out of the microwave and decided to go with the area where it is installed for yet another storage area. The door that comes standard, well it just didn't quite match or go with the rest of our interior so over the weekend I decided to build another one. Below is photo, comments and critiques are welcome. Thanks Rob

Congratulations Horace and Diane! We just pieced ours up on Mar 3rd then spent a month on the road. I can't imagine you will not love it.

Hmm curious, unless of course you just happen to be checking when it is in float stage. The charger will go up and down depending upon its stage. Currently mine is at 13.5 V and only 98% charged. Its really overcast and chilly but today its taking the longest ever to completely charge. I doubt the difference in a few months would make that much difference in charge rates. What James and Trojan might be referring to is when a charger is first engaged it goes into bulk mode (I believe), so a restart would more or less accomplish this status apparently. There is another method, albeit far less controlled and scientific. Hook up a set of battery jumper cables from you tow vehicle directly to the + & - terminals of your battery pack, making sure to turn off the charge controller and all loads by flipping the breakers under the bed storage area. Guaranteed to boil the batteries in short order, or alternatively if you have a small generator like our Yamaha hooking up the battery charge circuit with throw something like 17.4 volts at the batteries. You wouldn't want to leave it connected for too long at a time this way, maybe 10 minute intervals or so but that would certainly destratify or clean off the plates. As for weather this is very typical for up here this time of year and will last off and on throughout Apr, May and sometimes into Jun. I have seen it snow every month of the year up here, though not every month every year. Next week we could be in the 50's, 60's and 70's with sunny skies too. In fact the entire month we were gone in Mar was the warmest sunniest ever on record up here. Better here than where we were down south, go figure.

Pete, funny comments, you had me laughing. BTW, sorry we couldn't connect as you were heading east and us west. Man we got into some awful weather leaving the coast. Will detail this more later in another thread, but… In the interest of understanding solar, batteries and the charging of such I would like to make one additional comment and provide some anecdotal info. It occurs to me that perhaps there might be some misunderstanding regarding "equalization" vs normal SOP for battery charging. Correct me if I am wrong but it appears to me equalization is a maintenance scheme of keeping your batteries in top operating condition, sort of like changing the oil in your auto, and has nothing "directly" to do with ones amp storage. While normal charging strategies in day to day, week to week camping is about keeping the charge at 14.8 volts (bulk) in order to completely deep charge in this case the Trojan T 105's. Other batteries will have slightly different specs. Also in order to do a proper equalization one has to manually be taking specific gravity measurements during the time you are charging at 15.6 volts and only when the gravity ceases to rise are you fully equalized. To my way of thinking this is not something one would undertake while camping. Most battery chargers are 3 stage, bulk, absorption, and float, while a few can do a 4th stage that being "equalization". Its been awhile, probably more than a year since reading through all of Handy Bob's endless pages of battery rants but for the moment I don't recall him ever discussing this 4th stage of equalization maintenance. But if you have a charge of 14.8 volts in the bulk stage then the T105's will be filled up completely and thus by default you would have a complete 450 amp hours of charge. The notion the 320 watt panels in conjunction with the Blue Sky charger cannot accomplish this does not seem correct, not only based upon the math but my personal experience having used the system for 38 straight non stop days, often in some taxing conditions. While I don't have a method of measuring the stored amp hours on a full charge as an additional stress test to the system with our existing cold, rainy, snowy weather in MT I decided to leave the Oliver in our driveway unplugged to shore power since our return rather than taking it into storage. Its a waste of energy but it will give me a good idea of what can be expected in the future. Besides we wanted to do a few other things to it anyway, i.e. outfitting with some other accessories, performing a winterization task and a few other things. Yes we are still have freezing temps here. So #70 has been in the driveway for a week now with all but one night freezing some into the 20's and the furnace running at least during the evenings, the lights have been on as needed, pump running off and on. As an example this mornings battery capacity at sunrise was at 94% ± (running furnace through the night) with about half an inch of snow piled on the panels. Currently its at 97% with 14.1 volts showing on the battery meter, its noon. This is a bit slow historically but it is a breezy chilly day with heavy overcast skies. Yesterday, batteries were 96% at sunrise but by 1:00 PM had regained their 100% capacity. This during a wet heavily overcast rainy day. Furnace was on all night and day with some lights running as needed. System stayed 100% with 12.7 volts reading at the battery until at least an hour after dark. Most people do not camp in these conditions, and granted on mild winter days with shorter daylight hours and lower sun angle (especially above the 45th parallel) the system might not be able to regain as fast or as efficiently as the last 38 days have shown. It would be an understatement to say we are impressed thus far. Hopefully anyone contemplating the solar package and whopper batteries will find this info helpful. Rob

This is a good conversation for anyone contemplating solar and thanks for the link. I have pasted the section regarding equalization from the Trojan website below for those who want a quick read. A couple of quick thoughts on this from what I was able to garner from the Trojan website. While it may be true the solar charger that is in the Oliver might not be able to accomplish an equalization charge, surely the converter/charger circuit once plugged into a 110 AC shoreline would be able to. Also worth noting Trojan only recommends or as they state the "experts" recommend an equalization charge anywhere from once per year to once per month. It appears from this there is a ton of leeway on this aspect alone. The long and short of it is at least for now I'm not going to worry about it too much with the existing solar charger installed. And will take gravity readings perhaps a couple of times per year. For me I think my biggest concern will be freezing batteries, but even to that I am a bit skeptical to the amount of damage done. After all car/truck batteries in my neck of the woods will set in below freezing to sub zero temps for days, perhaps weeks with no charge to them at all. I have yet to see premature battery failure for vehicles in the northern hinterlands though it may have happened to others. And it appears their method for an equalization charge is done via a actual battery charger rather than a solar or converter/charger installed in the RV. IOW's it might be cheaper, easier in the long run to invest in a battery charger which would be way easier than taking the things out and heading down to the local auto shop to have it done. FWIW in the conversation Norm over on the FGRV forum stated he had a set of these T105's in motorhome for 14 years and they were still going strong when he sold the MH and this was in NH not exactly in the tropics and probably not with a solar package either. Thanks, and it would be interesting to hear from others on their experience. rob FLOODED BATTERIES ONLY Equalizing is an overcharge performed on flooded lead acid batteries after they have been fully charged. It reverses the buildup of negative chemical effects like stratification, a condition where acid concentration is greater at the bottom of the battery than at the top. Equalizing also helps to remove sulfate crystals that might have built up on the plates. If left unchecked, this condition, called sulfation, will reduce the overall capacity of the battery. Many experts recommend that batteries be equalized periodically, ranging anywhere from once a month to once or twice per year. However, Trojan only recommends equalizing when low or wide ranging specific gravity (+/- .015) are detected after fully charging a battery. Step-By-Step Equalizing Verify the battery(s) are flooded type. Remove all loads from the batteries. Connect battery charger. Set charger for the equalizing voltage (See Table 2 in the Charging section). If your charger doesn’t have an equalization mode, you can unplug the charger and re-plug it back in. This also will conduct the equalization charge. Start charging batteries. Batteries will begin gassing and bubbling vigorously. Take specific gravity readings every hour. Equalization is complete when specific gravity values no longer rise during the gassing stage.

While I know the rest of you folks are doing just the opposite and bringing your Oliver out of hibernation, here in Montana I need to do just the opposite at least for awhile longer. We are still having temps down into the 20's and occasionally it could get worse. So with that in mind I took the afternoon to go through the process. I think it all went well enough but on a few things I am not totally certain and would like to pick the brains of you folks who have gone through this. First, I could only get my fresh water tank emptied to 13% no matter what I did. The trailer is perfectly level, all necessary valves were opened etc etc. Surely this can't be normal. Black and gray tanks are at 0%, no problem there. The city inlet and fresh water tank inlet is where I am not really sure about however. Manual says to use "the pump" to get the anti freeze into these inlets. Since I didn't have a pump handy I chose the gravity method and was able to get some pink juice flowing through the outside shower as described by the manual. But somehow I am not 100% comfortable with this method. Advice appreciated. Thanks rob