Overland

Easy to do. You might see if Oliver is willing to do it first (I've complained many times that they don't have them standard, so the more people who ask, the better). If they won't, then I'd ask the guys in service to sell you an extra battery cable, which will keep you from having to make one up. At that point it's just mounting the switch and connecting the cables. I like these switches. You'll have plenty of room to mount it in the compartment under the street side bed, which is where the battery cable comes in. Or inside the battery box if that's where you want it.

So does your new rack slide in and out easily?

I’ve considered putting down a base of epoxy beneath mine. That’s the only way I can think of to keep them aligned when tightening them down.

Not a bad idea. I attached a few orange 'remove before flight' streamers to a few things I thought I'd easily forget, like chocks and the crank for my XO jack. I don't know if they help or not. We have a collection of shared notes on our phones that we use for all sorts of stuff, and they seem to work pretty well for us. We've also gotten into the habit of both going through the checklists to make sure we haven't skipped anything. That alone probably makes the biggest difference. There are still times we'll forget to close the shower drain or put the bungees on the kitchen drawers.

Great writeup, David.

That's interesting. I have the drain on the hot water line, but for the reason above. I really like having it - since my regular tank drain just sort of dribbles, I can open the other one, turn on the pump, and pump all the water out in no time flat.

Just registered for my wife and me. We didn't think we could make it, but we decided to take our spring trip a few weeks earlier this year which should get us back just in time to make the rally. We're really looking forward to our first rally as actual Ollie owners.

Do you have the Truma with the circulation pump? If so, the second valve is to drain the circulation line for winterization.

I was thinking the same as I watched it. There are a few common negatives, like price and (for some) size; and some common positives, most of which I think the Oliver is even better at, like ease of towing, aerodynamics, maneuverability, community, etc. And then we've got that hail thing licked. And while we can't claim to be leak free, at least none of us will be replacing the entire interior if we find one.

Mingy, I'm sure that once Sandra hears you upgraded to an Ollie, she'll give you more respect. That video pretty much sums up what I learned when researching trailers. I do think they're beautiful, and I don't fault anyone for buying one so long as they know the pros and cons beforehand.

Same with us. I think that they assign the VIN when they give the trailer its spot in the production line.

Like David said, there is a second set of valves on the unit itself that are used for winterization - I think he's right to check the manual against those first just to make sure that they didn't get flipped at the factory. If not that, we've had intermittent trouble with our interior switch. Sometimes we have to flip it on and off several times to get it to come on. If the light on the switch isn't coming on, then it could be a bad switch, or it could be that the cable has come loose from the back. There's a port in the cabinet over the cooktop that will give you access to check. Also, you probably know this, but the light should be solid when it's on. If it's blinking, then you've got an error code that you'll need to decipher. Ours will throw an error code at us every so often for reasons unknown, but flipping the unit off and on with the outside switch always fixes it.

Impossible to say, but you'd surely think so. I think if it were mine I'd want to at least open it up and take a look. I'm guessing that if the fuse blew that the problem would most likely be fan related, but I'm no expert. Possible that something got sucked in and jammed the fan? If it were me, I'd be uncomfortable using it until I knew for sure. Especially at night, and certainly not while I was away from the trailer.

That’s neat. I really want to add a front receiver but I’m surprised that the Curt hitch is so low. I have these pics from a guy who replaced his F-150 tow hooks with these custom receivers that he had made from a stock receiver tube welded to the existing hook. I’ve considered having one made. Only problem seems to be that his rock plate doesn’t fit back correctly. Interested to hear what others think of the idea...

Thanks Hobo, that's good info. It sounds like it all comes down to whether or not you'd be considered an agent. I'm curious where exactly that dividing line is drawn.

John, I think you and Hobo may have it backwards. I'm no lawyer, of course, but I believe that if you are acting as an agent of another company, that they are required to indemnify you against liabilities, just as if you were an employee. And I think that requirement is baked into the relationship by default; i.e., it doesn't have to be spelled out in a contract. So in other words, you want to be acting as Oliver's agent rather than as an independent party, and the offer of a commission I think seals the deal on you being an agent. I believe that it's Oliver's duty in this case to make sure that their agents' properties are safe and free of hazards. If they don't/can't do that, then that just makes the injured party's case against them that much stronger. For example, if I hire someone who works from home, and a client visits that home and slips on the front steps, I'm liable. Similarly, if the employee slips on his own front steps going to the mailbox to get a work related package, he can claim workers comp. I don't think there's much if any difference in those situations with an agent vs an employee. Again, not a lawyer, so I'm eager to hear other takes. What I'd like to see from Oliver is a) a clarification that they understand that owners are acting as agents on their behalf when showing their trailers, and b) assurance that they have proper insurance in place should a 3rd party injury occur.

I installed my own inverter. It can be either a simple or monumental task, depending on your electrical know-how and how far you want to take it. My advice would be that if you're a novice and just doing the inverter, then it's probably better to get Oliver to do it, since they run different sized cables to the batteries and install a transfer switch. At the end of the day, I don't think that the money saved would be worth the effort. I did mine because I also wanted a different solar controller and battery monitor, and also a hybrid charger/inverter. And different batteries. Pretty much the entire front end with the exception of the fuse panel, and one day I might replace that, too. I was an effort, but it's by far my favorite upgrade, so well worth it for me. But it's something that I think only a small subset of owners would benefit from. You can find basic wiring diagrams for units with and without inverters in the back of the manual - there are four diagrams in the very back that show wiring combinations with the inverter and water heater. You'd need the inverter, some 4/0 cables and lugs to go from the inverter to the batteries, a transfer switch, junction box, and some 20 amp romex. Plus you'll need to figure out how you want to mount it all,

My wife and I ended up financing for exactly those reasons - for us the cost of the money was less than what we earn from it, and of course pulling the money out would have meant taking a capital gains hit. So in the end, the financial benefit of financing outweighed our psychological resistance to debt. But we're both still earning incomes and the debt will be gone by the time we retire, so perhaps our resistance wasn't so great. If we were retired, we might have made a different decision - who knows. The great thing about the Ollie is that so long as I don't drive it off a cliff, it will still be going strong when the debt is payed. I'm not sure if you can really go wrong by financing, barring some market disaster, so long as you don't need the credit for something else. What I mean is that you can always pull the money out later if you decide to pay it off. And I think with the Ollie's resale value, you're unlikely to ever be upside down on the loan. The truck may be a different matter, of course. Then again, my wife keeps the checkbook, so my advice probably isn't worth much more than maybe the comfort of knowing that most all of us have weighed the same decision.

That Victron booklet would have been a really valuable resource when I was putting my system together. A lot of that information they've had available before, but not in one publication. It took me a while when I was first getting going, searching through their website, downloading everything I could find, and then reading through it all to find what was relevant. This booklet would have saved hours of time, and quite a bit of nervousness, wondering if I had all the info I needed. I think this will be my weekend read - I've already spotted a few handy bits of knowledge.

I think Moby is out of business. Last I read on Expedition Portal, they were belly up and some of their employees had bought them out and were putting together another company. I think a lot of people lost some big deposits in the process.

I just realized how tantalizingly close my truck's inverter is to being able to charge the trailer. It's rated at 400 watts. Do ¾ ton trucks have larger inverters? Can you get a truck with a 600 watt inverter?

1. Your Progressive Dynamics charger will only charge at a maximum of 45 amps DC, or 540 watts, so anything over that won't go to the batteries, though having some overhead would be useful if you're using the trailer while charging. So yes, 1000 watts will work. 2. Maybe. I know that there are propane conversion kits, and a few companies will sell you an already converted generator, and they do use quick connects. What I don't know is if anyone makes a kit for anything smaller than the 2000 watt models. 3. You do need the inverter, since you're going to plug the trailer's 120 into it. 4. Personal choice. 5. Some generators have a 30 amp plug just like you'd plug into at an RV park, but most just have a standard 20 amp plug. Just use your adapter. 6. This time of year is the worst for solar. So the biggest question is if this is the first and only time you've needed a generator, is it really worth the money and hassle of carrying it around? It might be 3 more years until you need it again. We had the same thing happen to us in November in the Smokies - solid week of shady campsites and cloudy days. So we paid our $30 and spent a night at a KOA. It was rough, but we survived.

I believe the problem is that photos taken from phones contain a bit of data that tells both the phone and your computer the correct orientation. So when you look at it at home, it appears right way up even if it's actually sideways or upside down. But that data either gets stripped out when the photo is posted or the forum software doesn't recognize it, and so the photos end up whichever direction you actually took them. I don't seem to have any problems with photos from my iPhone. It may be that the forum software respects iPhone data, or it could be that when I export them from Apple's Photos app they get corrected automatically.

GrumbleandTwist, I think I've got your photos corrected. Let me know if they're right. Great idea on the dirty clothes hamper by the way.

Are the bolts long enough to drill through and insert a pin?