Overland

I’ve wondered about using bus bars myself. If you go that route, I’d love to see some pics.

The Cooper Discoverers do seem like a good compromise. The BFG KO2s that I have on my truck would be overkill on the trailer, I think. They’re much beefier, and in the same size would probably have a good bit less rubber contacting the road. But wow they’re tough. I have deep scratches on three of my rims which couldn’t have gotten there without some rock moving the tire out of the way first and yet the sidewalls of my old tires looked pristine. I only had to replace them because Ford specs a custom soft rubber for the Raptor and so the tread was about gone at just 40k miles. The replacements I got are BFGs standard, so I hope they last a lot longer. Since this is just on a 2nd spare for now, I won’t be able to give much of a review. If I get to use it there’d better be a good story to tell. I’ll swap out the others in the spring and can say more then.

Dean, I've actually felt the same, but the state of my tires after three years has convinced me otherwise. They're not completely destroyed, but they're beaten up enough that I doubt their performance on the highway is any better now than ATs would be. Probably worse.

Looks the part, I think... Comparing the tread to the Michelin’s, I have to say that there’s not a huge difference in the size of the tread blocks or the siping, so I’m feeling pretty good about the highway potential. I ended up getting a free tire for my Raptor as part of the deal. I had asked them when they put on the new tires to save me one for a 2nd spare and when I went back today to have it mounted on the rim I got, they told me I’d bought the wrong sized rim, which was odd, since the rim was a pretty much new Raptor takeoff I got on eBay. Turns out that they had actually given me back the wrong tire and since they couldn’t find the old ones they’re ordering a brand new one for free.

I’ve cut five access holes in my trailer: one under my composting toilet, which obviously won’t apply unless you have one; one under the fridge; one under each set of galley drawers; and one in the closet. The most useful and easiest are the ones under the drawers. (Oliver service will cut one of them for you if you ever need to reattach your overflow drain.) The closet one is the trickiest - you can do real damage to your trailer if you mess that one up. I’ll see if I can put some photos together and make a post about them next week.

Often the telltale sign of a small leak will be the water pump cycling regularly. Obviously that doesn’t happen when on hookups, but the sign then will be the growing puddle of water under the trailer.

I’ll second John’s recommendations, since that’s exactly what I’ve been using. The crimper is tough to work with in some of the cramped spaces but I’ve made it work. It can be a workout at times. The crimps are extremely strong.

We had a few shake down issues - one broken elbow and something that came loose inside the Truma. This was some time ago, but it was a similar situation. Gravel and rough roads testing the limits of the trailer. The broken elbow was caused by a water line that had been cut short, and so was pulling on the all the nearby connections. The truma problem was possibly related, possibly an install problem, possibly a truma problem - who knows. But after the initial issues, I went through and tied down a lot of the plumbing to something solid with zip ties and we haven’t had any problems since, even with rough roads. Maybe my zip tying did the trick, or maybe on the first trip we just broke everything that was ever going to break. Now, recently I’ve gone through and replaced all the plastic fittings with brass. Basically replaced all the plumbing. It was an already ambitious project that got out of hand - don’t ask. Will it be better? I’ll find out. But to answer your question, yes I do think that the brass fittings are far stronger than plastic and that crimped connections are far stronger than the press to fit kind. Though I don’t think that either are necessarily inappropriate for Oliver to use. I guess any advice would depend on how you plan to travel from here on. If you think your bumpy road experiences will be few and far between, then I’d say chill, but maybe make up a small kit of pex fittings and some tubing, and learn some basics on doing field repairs. Or if you’re like me and can’t keep your trailer on pavement, then I can recommend a nice crimper and some good places to cut access holes.

I can't really knock them in since I installed them backwards to make it easier to inspect the nuts. There's just enough room behind to attach the grease gun without too much difficulty, but no room to swing a hammer. The new nuts have a flange but they're not serrated or anything. I may see about getting some jam nuts, that sounds like a good idea. Thanks.

I'm doing some suspension mods which involves new shackles and the specs say to torque them to 30-50 lb ft. But that level of torque wouldn't pull the bolts tight. I went ahead and cranked down on them and got them to seat, at least I thought, but when lubing them, I get grease coming out between the bolt and nut heads and the shackles. So now I'm worried the nuts are going to back off while traveling. Any suggestions on how to deal with this? Or is it normal - I'm guessing that everything is tight against the bushings if not the shackles, but who knows?

The little outlet testers are just easier and more idiot proof. They often have the added feature of a button that will test the GFCI breaker. It doesn't sound like Ray's problem would have been diagnosed with one of those, though it would have ruled out some common issues. Nonetheless, it's a good tool to have. I mean, they're cheap and useful. I carry a small multimeter as well.

My experience with AT tires is that they start to make noise if you rotate them. I just put a new set on my truck and I think this time I'm going to not rotate them and see how they wear. I'll probably do the same with the Ollie. Though the good thing about having two spares is that you can rotate them in at the same time and just switch tires front to back without reversing any of them, which is probably a big factor in the noise.

No, our X5 was the original E53 model and I don't think that run flats were even an option then. I did up the tire size when I switched out to all terrains, and that made the spare a pretty tight fit in the compartment.

Just curious what you did differently in the two cases above. Are you using a portable surge protector, or is it the built in version? I can see that if you had the portable, connected at the outlet in the first situation, and at the end of the extension cord in the second, that you'd get those results.

It doesn't appear that either the XC or XC pro have the ability to supplement AC power. From what I've read, they just have a built in transfer switch, so it's either inverter or shore power, but no combining the two. So I guess it's better to refer to these as combination inverter chargers rather than hybrid ones. The Victron, for example, uses varying voltages to determine whether power flows in or out of the unit, which is what allows it to supplement shore power with the batteries. But I suspect (assuming that the new power cord fixed everything) that the problem was essentially what you said, but the low voltage from the small cord didn't meet the inverter's requirements to flip the transfer switch.

The XC 2000 manual, which is easily found via google or the Xantrex website: http://www.xantrex.com/documents/Inverter-Chargers/Freedom XC/Freedom XC Series INV-CHG Owners Guide (975-0784-01-01_Rev-B)_ENG.pdf And the XC 3000 Pro manual, which is, not surprisingly, also very easily found via google or the Xantrex website: http://www.xantrex.com/documents/Inverter-Chargers/Freedom XC/Freedom XC PRO Owner's Guide (975-0799-01-01_Rev-C)_ENG.pdf So far, I haven't been able to determine what makes the pro a pro.

So can we infer or have we confirmed that Oliver is now using the Freedom XC combination inverter chargers on all of their inverter equipped trailers now? If so, what are are they using for the distribution panel? From the photo above, it looks like it may be the PD-5000. And on their non-inverter equipped units, are they still using the PD-4000 converter, or are they doing a separate converter and distribution panel to keep the wiring the same for everything? Just glancing through the XC 2000 manual, it looks like it has an optional remote display available. Does Oliver include that display with the unit? It appears that there is some rudimentary diagnostic info displayed either on the remote display or on the unit itself. You should be able to verify whether the unit thinks it's operating properly via some hieroglyphics on the display, which are translated in the manual starting on page 39. I'll take a moment to publicly shame whomever designed their icons - a fluorescent bulb to represent a load? I don't see any switching other than on and off. More relevant to the discussion is this note: So the unit does NOT have to be on for shore power to reach the outlets, but if the shore power isn't up to spec, it sounds like the unit won't flip the transfer switch to allow it through.

Do you have the new 3000 watt Xantrex, and if so, is it a hybrid inverter/charger? I know they make one, but I didn't think Oliver was using it. My hybrid inverter has four settings - on, off, charger only and inverter only. If it's set to charger only or off, then it doesn't supply power to the outlets even when I'm plugged in.

My guess at this point is that it's either a bad transfer switch or a wire has come loose.

Definitely call Oliver if no one else posts with a solution. Let us know what they say and what the problem turns out to be.

If there’s no power to the outlets when plugged in, inverter off, then something is wrong for sure. Possibly a bad transfer switch but hopefully there’s a simpler solution. I guess that I’d check the breaker on the house circuit first just to make sure that you didn’t trip it with the dehumidifier. That, or if the outlet you’re using is a GFCI then check that. Either way, I’d verify that you actually have power as a first step in figuring it out. Also, if you have a surge protector, make sure that it’s not showing an error (should cycle through E 0 on the display). It’s possible that it detected a wiring fault - no ground or maybe reversed hot and neutral.

Thanks for the video. Dometic doesn’t spend a lot of effort on usability sometimes. I think quite a few owners (including me) have had the same question.

Hmmmmm...r. I don’t know, that looks an awful lot like a Subaru Brat on steroids to me. 😂

My bad, I read over the part where you said Elite 1. I agree with the others, you’re definitely ok without the Andersen.

Thanks for the replies. The Cooper Discoverer was actually what I was thinking. I put those on my old X5 and they were great. Believe it or not, they actually made the X5 a decent off roader. We were at Overland Expo the year they were towing everyone out, but we plowed right through the mud to our campsite every day no problem. I’ve also heard good things about the Generals so I’ll take a look at those as well. Thanks.