Overland

It seems like an Easy Start would help in those situations.

For the Carefree and Fiamma owners, another good awning tip is to roll it up like this when leaving. It will withstand most any wind this way, and will provide a little shade and definitely some shelter for the windows in light rain. Plus all you have to do when returning is roll the awning out and reset the arm length. (It looks a little tight in this photo, which is either a mistake or possibly an illusion, as I usually roll it up so that there's about a quarter inch gap between the arms and hull. You don't want the arms touching the hull since they may move a bit in wind and scratch the finish.)

I've used this setup in winds strong enough that fellow campers said they were taking bets on when I'd lose my awning. I wouldn't recommend it long term in strong winds just because of the wear on the awning fabric itself, but for borderline wind or if you plan to leave your awning out while away and want to make sure that it's still there when you get back, the poles and straps work. I have a third pole that I use in the center, which isn't pictured. The shade fabric helps to send the wind up and over rather than underneath, but I've used the setup without it and it's fine, just noisier. The straps I have are overkill - 1" straps would probably be fine. The stakes you use are probably more important - I have some 15" iron stakes that work really well. One thing that I don't like about these particular straps is that they expand slightly when wet, so if it starts to rain in the night, the awning will have about a half inch of play and so will make a racket. I've considered threading the top of the poles so that I could secure them to the awning rail with a nut, but then I'd have to worry about the bottom lifting and the pole flipping out from under the awning. The poles are these. I use the 8' version. Three holes drilled in the bottom of the outside rail of the awning accept the ends of the poles and the straps go around the end of the arms to hold the awning to the poles. On our last trip, I tried using just three straps - one in the middle and one at 45° at each end, and it worked fine. I do recommend a center pole and strap since a strong gust could push up the middle of the awning and bend the outside rail. And if you have the new power awning that retracts automatically, then I guess that's a new problem to overcome if you want to strap it down. Can that feature be turned off? I have the Carefree awning, btw. I don't use the diagonal braces when I tie it down, since they're just in the way.

This is the bottle I bought - And here are the streaks and the weirdness with it holding onto water (rejex @ top and bare fiberglass below) - Maybe I got a bad bottle, maybe it needs to be applied under laboratory conditions, maybe it's snake oil. One of those three is true, and IMO it doesn't matter at all which one. There are dozens of other high quality and well recommended waxes out there that don't require a roll of the dice. I had really good luck with the Dura Gloss after I got burned with the rejex, but others have highly recommended the 3M marine waxes, as well as others. The last thing you want to do after spending two days waxing your trailer is to spend two more doing it again. I still haven't gotten around to rewaxing my truck, and it still gets black streaks every time it rains.

My experience with Rejex was that it caused black streaks on both my trailer and truck. And it actually beaded less than bare fiberglass or paint. That aside, having used both the rejex and dura gloss, I can say that the dura gloss goes on easier and so far is still going strong after waxing last spring.

I was looking at mine the other day and while I don’t have too many reservations about the strength of the cables, there’s no way that they would serve to cradle the tongue in a separation. But then as mentioned above, I don’t think chains would either, given where they’re attached. They have to be pretty tight to begin with to have any chance of working like that, probably too tight even to pull the safety cable in a separation. I think that if you really wanted the safest setup, you’d replace the cables with chains and also move their mounting points further back to the V in the frame. But of course then they’re getting pretty long. Maybe what we really need is a skid plate under the tongue, lol.

Correction to the above - it looks like my hose was in fact a knockoff of the Zero G brand, like Chris warned against. I got mine at Home Depot and just assumed that they were carrying the original brand. When I went back to replace the hose I noticed that what they carry has identical packaging but a different name. And then when I checked at home I saw that the old hose was an even different brand.

I really like this better than what have. I might need to order one of those tracks. Where do you plan to plug in the lights? We had Oliver put in a set of exterior 12v plugs and they’ve been very useful - it seems like an easy modification if you ever decide to pull out the drill.

Looks great, trainman. Are you going to give your trailer a name too?

I’d be interested if you could work something out like that. I’ve sat on the sidelines with the raspberry pi stuff but it seems like something I’d enjoy learning. Just be careful with dogs in wolf country, as they’ll have the opposite effect if you happen to camp in a pack’s territory.

Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think that mine are on three-ways. I think it’s just a separate switch and power. I’ll have to go verify but I seem to remember on one of our trips noticing that the lights were on and not being able to get them to go off - then remembering the panic switch, which had gotten inadvertently flipped.

I set mine off while cleaning glue from the edge of the vinyl floor under the dinette with Goof Off (MEK?). I guess that shouldn’t have surprised me. But it’s never gone off otherwise. I imagine that each unit has its own particular tolerance so replacing it with another might well solve the problem.

Yes, we did a panic switch for the port and starboard lights. You'll just have to replace both switches by the door with 3-ways, then run the wires down the gutter in the back of the overheads to wherever you want the panic switch to be. Ours is on the underside of the curbside uppers so that it's easily reached by whomever is lying in bed.

I think John Davies said that he was running his trailer tires at ~40 now. I keep saying that I'm going to experiment with that but still haven't.

I have those same hoses/fittings and agree that they're stout. Interesting that this thread came up today because I was just in the back yard and noticed that a Zero G hose that I use to water the plants on the patio had spring a tiny leak. It's about a year old, but I only started using it about a month ago. When I picked up the sprayer to relieve the pressure, the hose completely burst, but in a different location. Weird - I guess we must have gotten a big spike in water pressure that damaged the hose. That, or maybe UV damage?

One additional note on tire pressures is see if you can get a load inflation chart for the specific tire you have. That will tell you the maximum load for each 5lb increment in pressure and with that in hand, you can stop by a CAT scale on your next trip to get your axle weights and figure out a reasonable pressure that will give you a safety margin but won't beat you up.

Several of us have installed solid stainless rods instead of the curved track that Oliver uses, and IMO they function and look 1000x better. You can see a couple versions of the solid rods in this thread.

Typically, you would connect the truck tank to the boondocking intake and pump the water into the freshwater tank. It would fill as fast or faster than gravity feed. You could gravity fill the freshwater tank through the freshwater intake if you wanted. You could configure the valves to pump water from the truck directly to the faucets, via the boondocking intake. You could not use the truck’s tank as a continually connected auxiliary, via the freshwater intake, since the water would just flow through the fresh tank and out the overflow.

I think your tire pressures are still too high, especially the truck. I've been keeping mine at 40 front and 42 rear when towing (38 daily) and the tread wear seems to indicate that those pressures are high. (My KO2's are ready to replace, with the center of the tread worn thin.) 35,000 miles, roughly half of which have been towing. Trailer at 45.

It looks a bit like the Oliver tractor logo. Perhaps they had a run at boat motors?

Hmm. I can see them - I can't think of what might cause it to be selectively visible. I've sent an email about it so hopefully on Monday it can get resolved. Thanks for letting us know.

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As Mike said, Goal Zero and the like aren’t substitutes for generators, despite their branding. They are really just batteries, albeit with built in chargers and inverters. The Yeti 3000, in particular, seems like a rather niche product. It isn’t quite powerful enough to run an AC and wouldn’t last long if it did. Yet it’s overkill for pretty much anything else the average camper would want to do with it. So, if you want to run your AC while boondocking, a gas or propane powered generator is what you need, and if you want something to power accessories, like a portable fridge, then a smaller, more affordable unit will do the job just fine. I’d say though that these things are getting close, in power if not affordability. Of course even when they get there, recharging will become the bottleneck. Running your truck to recharge batteries is great while driving but totally impractical when camped.

We use a Luminoodle Basecamp string light. I taped the connectors to the bottom of the awning with VHB tape. Takes about a minute to set it up. It lights up the awning area well and attracts the bugs away from the door. Very groovy in disco mode.

I have no problems with technology, but I do think that having two systems acting independently to solve the same problem has at least the potential to cause problems. Vehicle anti-sway systems are designed to detect abnormal forces acting on the truck, and trailer anti-sway devices by their very nature provide forces that the truck’s system would see as abnormal. Particularly in situations where traction is low, such as rain, an unadjustable system like the Anderson would tend to induce understeer in turns and a reluctance to self straighten coming out of turns. Apart from the inherent danger in both situations, either could be misinterpreted by the truck and potentially cause the truck’s traction control to make the wrong inputs. So for me, it’s one or the other, and I know which one I’d want to disable.