DanielBoondock

I’m graphene coating the Oliver, just completed the roof. Basically following the CG Detailing method, which they graciously provide if you dig for it. They don’t come out West so I need to DIY which is a ton of work but satisfying. If there’s any interest I’ll provide details and tips

On all the models? Last I saw it was mentioned only for the Apex. Yeah as I talked about on the other thread, watching the suspension in action for a good hour its pretty obvious that while the 1750's are sufficient, they're not adequate. They're working but it looks like there's no extra margin, hit a good bump and they quickly bottom out.

I looked over my footage, not worth uploading. I was holding the camera, there’s too much camera shaking from holding it to be useful. Second it’s not long enough, you’d need an hour of watching the footage to see it, and ideally you’re also seeing the road too. In other words, ideally you’d be watching it while driving. It’s not something that jumps out at you, it’s not obvious as first glance. Initially I was thinking “move along, there’s nothing to see here”. But after 45 minutes or so of watching a story emerged which I wrote about above. It took that long to see the pattern, which I’d characterize as … Trust your suspension. Baby it, inspect it, religiously do your maintenance and inspections. It’s doing its job but is taking a hell of a beating. After this I’m going to religiously inspect before every drive. Upgrade it with the best components you can (Alcan) Factory suspension is clearly undersprung (Alcan) And now I am going to carry all these Dexter parts as spares on the road Trust your trailer, don’t underinflate your tires The Oliver is built like a tank - that’s why we bought it right? As detailed above the aircraft carrier is the best description. I’ve seen other suspension drive videos with conventional trailers and you can see them rattling and moving. In fact there are RV tech videos talking about the need for those panels to move relative to each other, ideally with a good angle bracket covering the edge. The Oliver is nothing like this from frame to body. Nothing is meant to move, it’s stiff like crazy, and from what I can see at best only very high band/high frequency vibrations make it through. But in a fiberglass four body trailer like this they’ll just damp themselves away. Avoid porpoising as best you can All the shaking going on inside the trailer? It’s that. Comparing that from the side mirrors to the underbody cam was night and day. Clear that any internal trouble comes from that Somewhat related, I had my Anderson installed from the factory. They recommended slightly slack chains. It’s bothered me ever since, how could these possible be doing any weight distribution? Didn’t get any response here about it but consulted Gemini which was clear that the chains need to be tensioned for WD to occur. So this trip I tried it, lifted the truck back end a couple inches, tightened the chains and then lowered. End result was the truck towed a bit better. I run a heavy trailer with a 700 lb tongue.

In case you’re not following my other thread where I mounted a trail cam such that I can watch the suspension Based on my observations of the Dexter in action, run, don’t walk and get yourself set up with five leaf Alcan.

Towed it back home after a trip. The following observations are preliminary pending what I see after I install the Alcan. They’re not scientific or measured in any way, but my impression from watching the trail cam for an hour over a variety of road conditions. Having said that I’m pretty confident of the patterns I’m seeing. I’ll try and post good video captures before/after so you can make up your own minds (I got some video from this trip but I really need a phone mount), but for now here are my impressions … Suspension Run, don’t walk and get yourself set up with a set of Alcan 5 leaf! For reference I started as an Alcan skeptic to agnostic, now I’m a raving convert. The stock suspension is undersprung, I’m convinced of it. Confident I’m seeing that the springs have too little travel and bottom out too quickly. After this I can’t unsee it, just sitting there parked they’re too compressed. Alcan’s assessment that for this trailer you need five leaves is 100% accurate, and for an engineer to say that is as strong an endorsement I can make. The stock suspension works, that’s the best I can say, but they’re not performing as they can (or should). I’m really curious to see the Alcan’s in action but I have no doubt it’ll be better than this. Five springs? All the way. Tire Pressure Stop underinflating your tires! Its ruining milage and stressing your tires. It’s perfectly clear the suspension is doing what it’s supposed to do and absorbing the bumps and rattles. Whatever makes it through that doesn’t matter and there’s little you can do about it anyhow. This is most obvious on hard, quick impulse hits like going over a pothole. That suspension is getting brutalized! But it’s taking it, I can see it rattling around like crazy but I’m not seeing an ounce of rattle making it to the hard mounted camera. Think of it this way, imagine a 7 thousand pound weight going down the road. Lots of mass and momentum right? Hard to get it to move out of a straight line according to Newton, correct? But it’s got a spring connecting it to the road which is designed to move and quickly. What I see is 100% clear - the trailer plows ahead like an aircraft carrier that doesn’t care one bit about the road, while the suspension is getting beat to hell. By the way I’m able to judge the trailer vibration I think by how ‘steady cam’ it is, and compared to the road/lines/etc as a reference. Basically it looks like an actual steady cam, while the suspension is rattling away and moving all over the place, while the trailer just isn’t seeing it. If you see stuff getting knocked around inside it’s the porpoising. That’s the biggest trailer movement I could see, with a little minor waddle, but road rumble isn’t making it up there much as far as I can tell. Tank drain Kind of an interesting one. I opened the fresh drain valve and it continued to drain intermittently for over an hour, from 30%. Going from a stop would always get a gusher. Anyhow FWIW - feel free to keep your Dexter’s and low pressure, but I wouldn’t touch it after seeing it in the real world.

Yes of course, it’s always operated correctly but two times at night it had this issue, only in high cold temps That’s what I’m doing? 😅 Sorry but that’s the point of this, I’ve taken care of other pressing tasks on the trailer and am getting to it (along with my breakaway controller which isn’t charging) JD I’m trying to to diagnose this, of course it could be the 12V but 32 years of debugging tells me that’s not the first thing to look at. It’s a rare event that only occurred in a couple special circumstances so it’s not like I can test and measure. At any rate I live near the Pacific ocean where temps don’t get cold enough to test. … a bunch of good points brought up, thanks … The nearest Truma center is 4 hours away and want you to leave the trailer until they can look at it in their queue. Not optimal. I know this because I’m chasing an issue with the blower fan intermittently rubbing. At any rate I’m looking into this now and gathering information so that IF I need to take it to the Truma repair I have conclusive evidence of an issue. I guarantee that if i took it now they’d say it’s fine, because it might be fine. At any rate with this thread I’m also looking to see if anybody else has experienced this.

Couple times on our March trip back from the factory the cabin heater got stuck. No heat, loud fan blowing. Consulting with Gemini I found the following, that its probably a lockout state caused by an ignition failure. The heater is running the fan full blast to clear out the ignition chamber of unburned propane. Can be caused by a low 12V line (not the case here with the max battery pack), or a propane line drop. Low nighttime temps cause the propane to contract and lower the pressure, explaining why it only happens then. Another possibility is moisture in the tank. Being new to the trailer and it being middle of the night I didn’t catch an error code, but most likely due to this. Possible fixes to prevent are to … Go to a place that can put a little methanol in the tank prior to filling to act as an antifreeze (a bother) Wrap the tanks (30lb on mine) in a heating blanket (expensive at $500+ each) The propane lines are set to 11” pressure by RV regs, so increasing that isn’t an option. Being out West we frequently travel between temperature extremes so I’d like to be generally prepared to prevent this from happening again. I’m wondering if there’s a low cost way tank heater blanket solution? Or other ideas, we have 30 lb tanks.

Nifty solution. I’ve been mooch camping at a relatives out in the country a lot this year and have been working with grey water similarly. I charge the house batteries off the truck, fresh water from a garden hose off the well and since we’re composting it’s just a grey water dump of biodegradable dirty water into a ditch. Super easy and convenient, if we had a black tank toilet it’d be a big problem with lots of long drives to a dump station. Anyhow about an outdoor shower, especially with dispersed camping and such, aren’t you taking a shower in the dirt? We’re camping in a mowed field essentially under a big old oak tree, I’ve got the ground pretty well cleaned up, but I have to be careful with the water hoses and such as any water into the dirt creates a muddy mess. I’m happy with the wet bath and just squeegee and towel dry it down, but an outdoor shower would be a dirty mess unless I had some kind of raised platform. Even then I’m still creating a mudbath around the trailer.

You read my mind, I anticipated there would be interest lol .. I made sure to wrap this up by the last Dexter trip GM just dropped an Surround Recording feature via OTA, but it ‘only’ records four cameras front/back/sides, so ill have to have my wife point a phone at the screen Just thought I’ll check the trucks App Store and see if there’s a screen record..

Trail cam! The Sierra EV has one of if not the biggest screen in the industry, massive 17” tablet, and GM’s got IMO the best cameras in the industry. Anyhow I can have two trailer cams, I’ve got one on the back for transparent trailer etc. I put the second on as a trail cam Spent a long time thinking about where to put it. Up top is pretty well covered with the other cameras, I realized the ground was the weak spot. Use cases you all will be familiar with Shows levelers/chocks etc. When driving on/off levelers it’s impossible to tell where you are and I often overshoot and bung them up as there’s few inches of margin with dual axel When offroad, or even parking lot speed bumps, will be really nice to see them coming instead of guessing for known obstacles. Sometimes I have to drive over a curb too Fun and a good idea to keep an eye on the trailer suspension Backing up to a stop. At my park I have the cement parking stop placed where I want it, but I can’t tell where it is until I hit it. Installation was ridiculously easy. This and only this cross bar was perfect as its the only one not holding anything up, so I could simply zip tie to it. And of course they have these genius cable runs on the two edges.

Congrats - the following March here 🥳 Wasn’t planning on it. As noted the Alcan are beefier, and basically don’t see a reason to mix and match. But also as mentioned it’s a good idea to keep them as spares, in fact I’ll keep the whole set as a spare until eventually I probably get sick of them kicking around and recycle 😅 VERY good tip, was not aware of that thanks!

Thanks for the encouragement! Good tip on the impact wrench, that’s the tool I was looking for. I already have a DeWalt mini vac and a leaf blower for the trailer so will add the mid impact wrench and 3/4” thin walled protective socket, plus a general impact socket set for using on the trailer AI is helpful here to pull out the tips from the forum, here’s the ones that stand out Make sure the shackles point up when assembling or it’ll have to be redone Do one side (driver) completely both axels first, then the other side, so the opposing side is aligned and secure Tighten U-bolts in a criss-cross Align the wet bolts with the grease holes horizontal, and seat the splines (e.g. rubber mallet) before final tightening Shocks Leave the compression strap on the Bulldogs until assembled and on the ground, then clip off to uncompress Be careful about compressing but not squashing the shock end bumpers Torque Bulldogs to 40 ft-lbs and the rest to Alcan specs (provided) Do all final torque settings while the trailer is on the ground and ‘loaded’, not hanging in the air Use the impact wrench only for loosing and spinning on the nuts, always use a torque wrench for final setting. Don’t use the impact wrench on the wet bolts

Thanks JD, yeah been busy, sandwich generation stuff … Thanks for the reminder about your post, taking notes, I’ll probably PM you once I’ve compiled them if you don’t mind correcting my homework That sounds more like it! I don’t mind doing it, shouldn’t be hard for old engie’s like us but I’m getting pulled in ten directions at the moment so just wanted to pay somebody. Anyhow I’m mooch camping supporting some family again in a couple weeks so I’m thinking I’ll just do it then. Yeah at this point it’s been enough effort spent talking to people I’m ready to call it sunk costs and just git ‘er done. I’ve got a couple good jacks, stands, a DeWalt torque/breaker bar, and as JD says there’s the rear trailer jacks. And hey saving myself $400/$900 I can pop for another tool or two for ‘free’, hmmmm …😅

OK, so I ordered the springs in springtime and made an appointment in July when we’d be in Utah near Grand Junction. But then they got a series of wildfires all throughout that area, my wife has PTSD from us going through them at home, so we cancelled the trip. Alcan wanted steep fees for holding on to them until we could come again next spring, no good (I had already paid for the springs per their requirement when you order). So I paid to have them shipped out figuring a local trailer suspension shop would have no problem with it. Wrong - they won’t install ‘customer supplied parts’. They want to sell you the parts themselves, sigh … OK so then I’m trying my local garage, near where I store the trailer with easy access. Great folks, used them for lots of stuff, but they don’t normally do trailers. Gave them all the information, they thought it looked doable for $1500, but I should check if they’re ballpark. AI search of this forum gave more like 300-500 or so. He said $900/minimum at a upcharge for (again), customer supplied parts and wouldn’t do it for less than four hours @ 250/hr. Grrrrrrr There’s another shop I can try locally, or I could take them BACK to Alcan next year, but I’m getting frustrated and thinking about just installing the damn things myself. I’ll troll the (38 page!) thread for DIY install. Anyhow feeling down at the moment, looking for advice thanks

Interesting choice. Cushioning the pitch seems like a good idea, that's the main reaction I get at my hitch. The Anderson is designed to constrain yaw to prevent sway. I get none of that, and the truck has antisway built in with rear steer wheels. You don't get any weight distribution, but the Anderson doesn't do much of that anyhow as far as I can tell, don't know why they advertise it as a WD hitch.