Overland

You might consider getting a mattress made to fit the curves and shove the mattress all the way back. If you could cheat the width down a bit, then you'd have room for a couple of 18" wide seats in front of the bed, which might be nice.

You could be right about the X5 tow capacity - I'd have to go check. I do think that it's considerably lighter, 4500 lbs or so and a 1500 lb cargo capacity. My experience though is that it can really handle only about half of that and still act like you expect it to. When we load it up Clampett style for camping, it's 300 lbs on the rear hitch, probably 150 on the roof between the sky box and the roof rack, and then another 300 inside. Plus us and the barrel of whisky strapped to the front, so 950 lbs or so, and it's a bit much. It feels sluggish going up grades and the rear end can begin to step out if you're too agressive with the steering or get going too fast. On the other hand, the sag with that weight is barely noticeable. Maybe and inch or so - much less than it looks like on yours, which is interesting. One thing about using a hitch rack is that the COG of the load is further back than it would be with a regular hitch. In our case, it's twice the distance, so the torque on the receiver is actually twice what it would be if we were towing with the same tongue weight. I'm not a big fan of hitch racks for that reason, even though we use one. On the WD hitches - I know that there are SUVs and even some trucks that say not to use it. My guess is that on a lot of unibody vehicles, they design for loads in one direction and not both like they'd need to do for a WD hitch. Like I say, I don't know about the MB, but I'd certainly check on it before you add one. You said it raises up - does it have a load leveling suspension? That might be another complication with a WD hitch - don't know. I think I'd be O.K. with the X5 and the smaller Ollie. With the bigger one, the numbers might work on paper, but I wouldn't feel safe. I like to have a big margin of error. Plus I'm just very picky about how cars handle - I don't know how I'm going to deal with this whole pickup thing.

I think also that a lot of unibody vehicles aren't designed to handle the forces of a WD hitch. Many of them specifically say not to use them - don't know about the Merc. I also think that the european makes are a bit optimistic with their tow ratings - designed for lighter tongue weights. Our X5 I think is supposed to tow 7000lbs, but I'd never try to tow an Elite II with it. It's gotten squirrelly before with just a hitch mounted cargo rack with under 300lbs of gear on it.

Steve - what's the material? Neoprene? Will there be a separate cover for the nose or are you just protecting the main body? And how are you going to attach it? Snaps seem like the first choice, but maybe twist stud fasteners & grommets would be another option. What about adding some adjustable straps at the corners and some D-rings on the hull so that you could cinch it tight? I can't wait to see the final project.

Awesome! Hope it doesn't take up your whole weekend.

Yesterday and this morning I couldn't get 'recent topics' to show anything at all. Last week or so, the forum stopped updating it's caches for me. It had been doing really well for a few weeks, though slower. I figured that Matt had decided that the tradeoff was better the way he had it before - less updating but faster. For me, it end up being slower though, because since I can't tell what's been updated I have to hunt around to see if anything's new. I'd rather load one really slow page than four slightly less slow pages. Oliver just needs a faster server/hosting service. That, or a less taxing/more mature forum platform.

I think that particular hull was finished a while ago, but the owner asked to pick it up later. I would think though that some hulls end up a bit out of sequence due to changes or complexity, particularly if there are custom items that have to be done in service afterwards.

Hey Buzzy - just curious, why not leave the videos up but disable the comments? That way people will still be able to see your great work and you won't feel obligated to respond to all of the questions.

You can save a little weight by going with aluminum tanks. They'll cost twice as much and only save 7 lbs, but hey, 7 lbs is 7 lbs. And you could polish them to make them shiny. Think of how well you'd sleep at night knowing that you have shiny aluminum LP tanks.

Congrats on the delivery. Is that a metallic gold stripe and logo? I think that's the first I've seen that color - looks really nice.

buzzyBuzzy, please enjoy your time with your family, both two- and four-legged. I'll miss your regular contributions, but of course will look forward to the occasional appearance. Hopefully those won't be too rare. Keep in touch!

I think 'Anonymous' is just what happens when the account is deleted. Hopefully, it was either an accident* or just something done in haste. Buzzy, if you're reading this, I hope that you will consider reinstating your account; or if you can't do that at this point, then opening a new one. I value your input and it would be a great loss to the community if you left. Even if you have decided to devote your time elsewhere, you can still keep an account open so you can pop in and say hi every now and then. --- *if Buzzy is anything like me, he's at least once wondered what happens when you click that button.

As far as I could tell, Buzzy was one of the lucky few who managed to avoid all of that. Unless something was going on behind the scenes, I saw no indication he was upset about anything.

It looks like he deleted his account? Was he mad about something?

The iPhone version looks really nice - I like that I wouldn't have to install a separate monitor, and the separate signal booster is also a plus. If you end up getting one yourself, please post your experience.

That's pretty much where my thinking is now too. Thanks for the info on the Atwood. I'll ask Jason about it. With the Dometic I could get a built in heat strip and a single thermostat, but that's probably a poor tradeoff against the quietness, durability and efficiency of the Atwood. Plus I could run it with a 2k generator if needed without having to install a soft start.

Not having a heat pump wouldn't be the end of the world. After thinking about it, that wouldn't be a dependable heat source for us anyway, since the outside temperature would probably be too low. So electric heat is really our only choice to supplement the furnace.

Thanks John. Do you plan on doing something yourself with the condensate drain, or just letting it drip? Are you worried about staining over time if it drips?

Bumping this topic... My initial thought is that they seem better than the Dometics by most every measure. They also have less stringent clearance requirements than the Dometic, which could help if you want to max out on solar like this (still haven't heard back from Oliver on that). I believe that Trumpetguy installed one of these, along with a soft start and he had nothing but good things to say about it, at least for the short time he had it before selling his trailer - I'm curious what the new owner thinks. The only drawback I can see is that only their larger model can be used as a heat pump. This might not bother most, but it recently occurred to my wife and I that we'll be spending a week each year with hookups while skiing, and it would be nice to be able to heat the trailer for that period without worrying about the propane level.

Has anyone gotten one yet? I know a few of us are in the queue, but I don't know if anyone has a completed trailer yet with the composting toilet.

Same here, but only this morning. Yesterday it was slow, but the 'normal' amount.

Donbob, I've never heard of silicone damaging fiberglass, though I know there's a lot of anti-silicone sentiment on the fiberglass forums, for other various reasons. I'm curious to read up on that, if you have a link.

Thank you, I think? lol I, in turn, appreciate your far more practical approach.

Yeah, that'll be me. Pay attention, Oliver - this is where the market is growing. That's a big trailer, 30'. To my eye, it looks like their 'lift' is putting them about even with a stock Oliver. I wonder how heavy that beast is - a 30' Flying Cloud is 6,400 dry, so maybe 7,500 loaded up? Sparky and Snowball will have to meet someday. Those guys maintain two threads on ExPo, one of their trip videos and another of their van build.

I would think that if the manufacturer(s) won't change their product, that it wouldn't be too much trouble for Oliver to have their own made. They'd have to pay for a die to be cut for each shape, but the incremental cost thereafter shouldn't be much. They could even do it themselves with a die, a sheet of silicone rubber and a guy with a mallet. And you'd think that they could probably recoup their initial cost in short order by selling them to existing customers for a small markup. Online, I can find custom gasket companies with a minimum order of $500, so you have to assume that a die costs less than that. Depending on the overall cost, it might even be something that a group of owners could organize themselves.