Steve Morris

Good Morning Campers! Site G23

We found an exquisite site on our way to Alabama! Curiosity is gently illuminated by the stars, err, sodium lamps, with the sound of a rushing stream in the background. I mean asphalt. Cracker Barrel in Cave City, Kentucky, at the entrance to Mammoth Cave National Park.

The 2023 has 400W of solar at 24VDC. I ran the air conditioner using the batteries in the driveway to see how much it used. I don’t recall the exact numbers now, but it was in a post from when we picked up last March. I think it worked out that one hour of air conditioner use ate up 10% of the battery, and took one day to recover. Another time I ran the AC about ten hours and had 20-some percent left, so it isn’t a simple 1 hour= 10% =24 hours. I have a Bluetooth 200W 12V panel, but can’t tie it in to the Oliver’s Victron charge controller due to the different panel voltages. I have a second smaller Victron charge control to add parallel to the main one using the Zamp port, but haven’t gotten around to doing that yet.

That's what I use every time I'm not on an extended trip. I can take my time at home, and rinse the black tank several times. Disconnected I can point the nose at the sky to get every drop out. No messy dump stations, no long lines, and no burst hoses. (There was a long back up at David Crockett State Park when we picked up our trailer as someone's hose burst during black tank dumping.) EDIT: I do not recommend the 45° fitting shown with the swivels. Both ends leaked between the orange and translucent parts. 🤢 I've also stopped using the gate on the end of the 10" extension. Without it, I can get the 45° fitting and pump a little closer to the trailer, allowing the nose to go a bit higher before the motor touches the ground.

Our 2023 Platinum solar package has two 320A/h batteries, for a total of 640. A lot more solar would be needed to support long term use. Mine takes a full day of sunshine to recover 10% of the battery capacity.

And, you won't get in as much trouble. 😂 See ya in a few days! (Right on the corner behind you again on G23)

Nice work! That's the route I originally wanted to go with my rack. But we wanted the option to move the rack to the truck, so went with the 2" conversion, instead.

No idea when and where they disappeared, but two of the rubber feet on the bottom of the cast iron grate have gone missing. Dometic's manual and web site don't have any information, and an online search provides a lot of grommet options, but none look like what's on our grate. Has anyone found a good replacement? Thanks!

A garage/barn bigger than the house? That's my kind of setup! 😀 And thank you for providing an undeniably valuable reason to purchase a drone: to check for leaf/detritus buildup behind the awnings without resorting to the dangerous ladder. Does that sound convincing? 😂

Mosquito Lake State Park in northeast Ohio for the Casitas of Ohio Spring Kick-Off Egg Rally. Three Oliver’s, four Escapes, a couple Scamps, two Cortez, a Trillium, and 20 Casitas. Deb was fiddling with “night mode” on her phone. Next up is a weekend with Tearjerkers and then head to Alabama!

Not yet, but I plan to add an external Anderson plug on the lower portion of the propane housing. I’ll wire it into the front jack power connection. I’ve already purchased this plug. https://a.co/d/dZGlkHd My refrigerator in the tow vehicle has an Anderson plug, so this will be a more secure setup than a typical cigarette lighter outlet. And the 640 A/hr batteries in the trailer won’t even notice the extra 2-3A load of the fridge.

I've added you to the list of attendees I've been accumulating. Nothing official, and not related to Oliver's registration list. Just an easy way to connect faces to forum names once at the rally. I'll be posting a PDF for folks to print out before we leave for Alabama.

We just watched your video during lunch. You can see how happy you are with the new trailer. I wish I could get Deb to commit to 100 nights a year! We were just 44 last year, and looking at 45-60 this year as of now. She's an avid gardener, and the best travel time is also her favorite time of the year in the yard. It looks like you're headed to the rally, so we hope to meet you there. We're on E-23. If you'd like, add yourselves to the list I'm collecting of attendees at:

We found that you can crack it partially open until it just taps the inside of the basement door. This seems to keep up with accumulation. I know that some owners have opened a hole in the door to allow full opening of the handle.

Only if there is still an option to still have the fan run continuously. None of you have heard Deb snore! (Well, maybe some of you within four or five sites of us at last year's rally...)

Yep! I placed a dish towel over the top of the door to keep the door from closing over the winter. If placed correctly, the door stays open but the light switch is depressed, shutting off the light. Or, add a separate switch.

Thank you, Deb says I'm too critical of my work. Maybe, but coming from 45 years of engineering, I can't help but analyzing everything. 🤷‍♂️ I did buy a solar filter just for this event. I was tempted to go cheap, but considering that I was putting it on a very expensive lens, I ended up at the midrange of the quality name-brand filters. I was using my Fujifilm X-T5 with XF 100-400mm lens plus XF 1.4X TC, Hoya 77mm solar filter on a heavy Bogen tripod from the '70s, and remote shutter release. I'm also thinking that most of the softness was from the slight overcast condition. Here's a practice photo from last week during the same time frame, and the edge of the disk is much sharper. You can clearly see the sun spots, which didn't show up so well on yesterday's partial eclipse images. This was taken at 840mm (full frame equivalent), ISO 250, 0 ev , f/8.0, 1/1000 sec using the same setup as yesterday. I still have the RAW files from yesterday that I haven't reviewed yet. I'm guessing there will be much the same results, just in much larger files. As @Dave and Kimberly mentioned above, I had everything set up ahead of time so that I didn't spend the whol thing looking into my camera. Just occasionally adjusting the viewfinder to get the sun centered and poking the remote. It was only Deb and me in our backyard, so no crowd to enjoy it with. But it was still amazing to look around and see how things changed so quickly. Deb has about 50 solar lights scattered around her vegetable and flower gardens, and they all came on during totality. It was a spectacularly enjoyable afternoon! Only 75 years until the next one passes over Ohio! 😉 Thank you for the input!

Thank you, sincerely. But as I mentioned to John D over on the FB group, I’m not particularly pleased. It almost looks like movement more than missed focus, but it was on a good tripod, we had no wind, 1/500th second, mirrorless camera so no shutter bounce, and remote release. Not what I expected from $4k of equipment I guess I don't work well in a hurry...

We were in the backyard here in northern Ohio, with almost 4 minutes of crazy skies! Light clouds and maybe a bit of missed focus left the edges soft, but these came out fair. I'm sure there will be a lot of pretty spectacular photos posted across the country!

RV Miles YouTube’s RV news today reported the the nationwide average for RV repairs with in stock parts is now 60 days. The average wait time for service is 45 days. The perfect time for Oliver to discontinue their service center… https://youtu.be/W7ukKfZ15M0?si=Naunin475btnCWOH

Here was @hobo "2HOBOS" Paul Polk's experience on the subject, from the Facebook forum yesterday: "I have to say, as a longtime Oliver owner, I am EXTREMELY disappointed in the announcement. Here's an example of why: I am currently on travel around the US and have suddenly (but not altogether surprisingly) starting to have some issues with my old, AGM batteries. Knowing our next stop is near a new Oliver dealer in LA, I called them this morning to see about possibly having my four batteries replaced while there. Here's what I got: "I understand you're an Oliver trailer dealer", (the receptionist didn't know anything about that). "Who makes the Oliver?" I said "Oliver TT." ME "Let me speak to service please". SERVICE: The service tech knew nothing about them being an Oliver trailer (what is that?) dealer and service center. She said she'd talk to someone and call me back. That was over an hour ago. This is NOT going well. So at best, if they actually agree to take me in, they know ZERO, NADA, NOTHING about my trailer. Not real confidence inspiring. OK, finally got in touch with some who is willing to assist although they hadn't heard of Oliver trailers either. Will report back later."

#1360 was delivered at the end of March 2023, and they are now over 1500 a year later. So, year over year, that's at least 140.

@JEssary I think this is a terrible decision by Oliver, and a disappointment to us. We took delivery of Curiosity one year ago tomorrow, and have had zero problems during the 7700 miles since. However, there was always that security of Oliver's famed customer service in mind in case something did occur. And that service was a large part of our buying decision. Oliver's reputation was built on the care after the sale, and that set it apart from any other manufacturer. Now, with no factory sales or service, it would appear the same as any other builder to a prospective buyer. Look at every YouTube review of Oliver, with clickbait headlines of "Is It Worth It", or any RV blog review of Oliver. The praise of Oliver's service is always highlighted and almost as legendary as the quality. Any time a prospective buyer comes to this forum or the two Facebook groups and asks about Oliver, Oliver's quality AND service department are, without exception, heralded as what makes Oliver better than any other trailer. I think that this decision will have a sizable impact on future sales, and on resale value of current owners' trailers, and trust from those owners. From my reading, many owners look forward to their annual service trip; almost like a pilgrimage. I can't imagine looking forward to a trip to a giant RV store. Here in northern Ohio, my closest authorized service center is 433 miles away, and has stellar sales reviews on Google. However, the service reviews are fair at best, with typical complaints of long waits and shoddy work. More concerning are a couple claiming no service on trailers not purchased there, or even parts sales. The next closest is 461 miles, only 100 miles less than going to Hohewald. Color me disillusioned...

I thought this was a thread about Steve's Road Trip Chronicles. @shhQuiet 😂

Remember, those prices do not include shipping to the US, import fees, etc. Before ordering the Oliver, we were working with the sole US importer of Kimberley Kampers, which happened to be in my home town, and were looking at the mid-size Kimberly Kruiser S3. And this was just before COVID and the Suez Canal blockage. It was a $90k trailer with about $8k of shipping and other fees. Eight moths later, it was $15-20k in shipping, and due to supply chain problems, the price jumped to $140k. Out the door with taxes was going to end up north of $175k. For the small percentage of the time we'd use it off-road far enough to need its features (air suspension, water purification, solar out the wazoo) we couldn't remotely justify it over the Oliver. One of our previous forum members, @donthompson moved to the bigger Kimberley Kruiser T3. https://olivertraveltrailers.com/forums/topic/6211-a-second-new-direction-kimberley-t3-kruiser/#comment-65745 Note that a lot of the Australian campers are being built in China these days. And then "assembled" in Australia (or in the US in the case of the Series Black, that used to come from Australia.) Buyer beware!