Overland

I still fail to see the point of a Facebook group. All it does is siphon posts and solutions from this site to make both less useful.

Because we owners are Oliver's R&D department. I think early on, they'd try most anything an owner requested. Then they got to the point where they'd say no until the third or fourth person asked and they'd relent and try it. Now I think they say no until they see one of us make the modification ourselves and then they adopt it.

We have the cabinet option and keep a small toaster oven in there, which is more useful to us than a microwave. But I'd at least consider a convection microwave and I'm curious what unit they're using. I don't really know much about them though - never used one. I assume you can use it like a conventional oven?

There was definitely a drop in initial quality on the early 200's, but that seemed to slowly improve over the course of the year. I don't think any of those quality issues should harm the resale value of those units over time, however, since they're things that can and likely would be repaired either by Oliver or the owners. I'd ask a premium for mine if I were to sell (not a chance), because I've gone through and upgraded all those problem areas to a higher spec than Oliver delivers.

I suspect that John's missing ground is just another example of poor quality control on the early 200's. I think Oliver should probably issue a service bulletin on this so that owners know to check. Speaking of missing electrical bits - John, I'm curious if your trailer came with fuse blocks and disconnects for the batteries or solar. Mine did not, and I don't know if that was because it was delivered unfinished or if it was Oliver's choice to omit them. I was told that they felt they were unnecessary, but then I was told a lot of things and I've seen some recent trailers that at least have a fuse block in place. IMO, it's unsafe to work on the electrical without both disconnects in place and not safe at all without a fuse block on the battery and a fuse or breaker on the solar.

$40-$50 on Amazon. I can’t remember which one I got but I suspect that apart from the super expensive ones they’re all generic Chinese tools with different branding. The one I got was definitely high enough quality for the 50 or so crimps I had to do when swapping out my electrical. Also came in handy when making cables for a dual battery setup in the truck and for my portable winch.

I agree. If you’re going to get into the 12 volt system and heavy gauge wiring one of the best tools you can invest in is a good hydraulic crimper.

The odor of RV antifreeze is worse. If you sanitize your fresh tank before storage, drain that chlorinated water into the grey tank plus a little extra chlorine and leave it for a few days and that should keep the grey tank from stinking. Also, close the shower drain valve and put the stopper down on the kitchen sink strainer and that will keep odors where they belong.

Good to see that they're putting an actual drawer in front of the sink now instead of that useless tilt out thing. Like a lot of customer mods that Oliver said 'can't be done' until they do it themselves and decide to make it standard.

Looks like a nice job on the table. I'm also interested in your bike rack install. We have the hitch mount 1up and love it. I'd planned to add two to our Ollie but ended up putting a basket on our rack instead. We wished we had bikes on tour last trip though. John, I think the tray sections of the 1ups are all the same. The heavy duty ones just have beefier hitch mounts. The super duty one they say has an extra rail beneath the tray, but I think that's only because the ends are cantilevered that it needs that. The individual trays are simply their roof mount models. Or, like you say, if you have the hitch mount version, you can unscrew the trays and use them separately - with some caveats, since the hitch versions are designed to fold and the joining piece isn't flat. Hard to explain, but if you look at the pics on their website you can see that it's wedge shaped. You should call and talk with them, and send them a pic of the Oliver rack so they know what you're mounting it to. I bet they'd O.K. its use to 75lbs like the super duty racks. Worst case, I think you could add a 2" tube lengthways under the racks for added support.

My only regret is that had I made better choices when I was 18, maybe I could afford something like an Earth Cruiser today. Our Ollie had an incredibly difficult birth, partly because we customized it so much, and party because Oliver was undergoing some difficult growing pains at the time. Despite that, having lived with the trailer for almost a year now, I can't imagine anything better matched for the way we travel. Except for that Earth Cruiser. In fact it's hard to believe it hasn't even been a year. Camping with the Ollie is so natural that it feels like we must have had it forever.

Thanks Don. We wanted to see Hovenweep a few years ago when we were at Mesa, but there was no time. We're thinking we might head back that way next spring to pick up what we missed. The campsite there looks pretty nice.

I actually see it the other way around. The Truma is great with hookups since you can take as long of a shower as you want, provided you've got enough propane. And if you aren't going off pavement, you aren't as likely to experience its fragility. It's boondocking where the tradeoffs have to be weighed. Yes, it's more efficient with propane, but it's also more fragile, complicated and difficult to get repaired. A traditional water tank is dead simple and can be repaired most anywhere, or by yourself; is sturdier, and has less to go wrong. I'm on the fence whether the Truma was the right choice for us, though I don't necessarily regret getting it. But my early enthusiasm has definitely been tempered. I'll probably feel better about it once it's out of warranty and I can crack it open myself to make repairs. Right now, it's a mystery box and I hate that. And don't forget that with the water tank you get an extra 5(?) gallons of water storage, too.

David we had the exact same thing happen on our first trip. Water gushing into the unit. We were no where near a factory authorized service center but fortunately we were at the end of our trip anyway. Truma wasn't of any help a the time and said that we'd either have to have it serviced at one of their authorized centers or have it replaced by Oliver, which is what we did. I'm glad that they were more helpful with you.

That’s the problem with these things. I have a different system (Victron) but it would cause the same issue if it were to go out - i.e., not allow power into the trailer. I asked them about that some time ago and they told me that oftentimes boat owners will install a manual transfer switch to bypass the unit in case it ever malfunctions. Just another on my long list of someday projects.

I generally use accuweather, both the app and website. They have the best long range forecasts and also a really nice, simple app that you can customize to display the data you want - things like dew point, which is often overlooked on most apps. I'll bookmark ahead of time in the app the places we're headed and then take screenshots of the long range forecasts from the website for later in case we don't have a signal. I also like the hourly graphical charts from NOAA, which are much easier to interpret than the typical list of data from an app. If we're at a park, I'll usually check their weather charts since they'll often have weather for specific areas within the park, which can be dramatically different from what you'd see on an app. I'll also look up at the sky on occasion, just to verify that it's not raining.

I know they use a very strong epoxy adhesive to bond fiberglass and pvc. I don’t remember the brand but it’s probably similar to this - 3M Panel Bonding Adhesive

I really like what you guys did with the graphics.

Vector, did you ever figure out the problem? I think Bill was on the right track but what I bet they did was connect your custom outlet to the line side of the GFCI instead of the load and that’s why that outlet stayed on. You’re probably right that the GFCI is fried which is why it won’t reset, but of course the other possibility is that you actually have a ground fault somewhere down the line. I’d try unplugging the microwave and seeing if it will reset then, just to rule that out of the equation.

Going from memory, I think the power-in cables on mine (battery & solar) are red, and then it switches to black for distribution. The negatives are all yellow, except the solar which is black (probably because they couldn’t get yellow in the higher gauge). The 120v side is standard black hot, white neutral, green ground.

Looks cool in the photos, but I can't help but think of how difficult it would be to get a 230lb box onto a hitch receiver that you can't see.

You may have run across what I call the Great Grey Tank Mystery. With our trailer level, I can fill the grey tank from the kitchen sink and when the tank is at 80%, the kitchen sink will start to back up. But the shower will not, and in fact I can still pour water into the shower drain without it backing up. Somehow, with all of the drains open, I can have a sink full of water backed up in the kitchen and nothing will flow out the shower drain. To solve the problem, we have to 'burp' the grey tank by tilting the trailer a bit to one side. Once we do that, the kitchen sink will drain and we can keep filling the grey tank to 100%. The problem has to have something to do with air getting trapped in some corner of the L-shaped tank, but I've stared at the plumbing diagram until my eyes go crossed trying to figure it out. Even so, I can't see how that would prevent water from backing up into the shower, unless there's a secret check valve on the shower. Anyway, suffice to say that in an Oliver, water doesn't always flow downhill.

Thanks Spike - never would have occurred to me to spray that into the compost, but I'll have to give it a try.

I decided better safe than sorry on the bug thing. I had the ladder out yesterday to install the easy start on my AC, so why not add a screen to the plumbing vent while I was up there. Taking off the vent cap is just one screw and it pops off. Once uncovered, the PVC vent sticks up a half inch or so from the roof, making it a simple task to add some screen. I had a pack of these in the trailer for repairs, and they fit perfectly with just enough overlap to zip tie one on the vent. (Those particular patches come with tape around the edge, but it didn't want to stick so I took the tape off and used a zip.) Took all of five minutes, if that. Just be sure that if you go through the trouble of adding a screen that you use a finer mesh like a tent screen. I think standard screen that you'd get at the hardware store is probably not fine enough to keep out the sort of gnats that would infest your toilet.

Thanks for the quick reply Matteo. I actually ended up leaving the cap and wire in place so it’s good to learn I wasn’t nuts for doing so. I didn’t have time yesterday to test it out so hopefully today I’ll be able to get back out there and let it run through it’s learning cycles. By the way I looked through those diagrams on your site but missed the heat strip one since it’s listed as a Penguin I model. Probably they just changed the name and cover but kept the same internals, or at least the same wiring scheme.