Rolind

Hello to the Oliver we saw heading south on US 1 south of Marathon Florida this morning. We were the northbound Superduty sans Oliver flashing our lights.

The mobile rv tech came by yesterday and was very helpful. He pulled the tire and drums and the brakes looked great. Little pad wear no rust, dirt, rocks or extra parts. Bearings are fine. He had no explanation for why the brakes would temporarily lock up. He suggested that perhaps there was a ply failure that resulted in a bleb that then resulted in increased wear. I think this is possible but hard to imagine occurring in the center of the tread. I am happy the brakes are ok but I suppose time will tell. I will be lowering my tire pressures as per JDs suggestion. I am not sure pressure had anything to do will our recent tire failure but lower pressures certainly seem to make good sense given the trailers weight. Thanks to everyone who posted advice.

Well I took another run at the occluded Truma condensate line today with a better outcome than last time. I was better prepared today, with canned air and a 16ft flexible auto sunroof drain brush, extra tubing and numerous fittings for the tubing. As before, I was able to get good drainage from the Truma condensate drain cup on the street side, which drains under the trailer on the curbside but nothing from the other side. I again confirmed that the actual drain cup was not occluded. I cut the tubing about 6 inches from the curbside drain cup but was only able to pass my brush about 18”. The line was completely occluded where the tubing passes behind the upper cabinet. I could not access the tubing in this area. Lastly I cut the other drain and using a Y connector tied the curbside line into the street side line. I did block the stump of the defunctionalized tubing. I tested for leaks and reassembled the unit. All seems to be draining well. I have no idea why the line was occluded. I was hoping I could access the occluded area but it was not to be. I also considered passing a new run of tubing, but the was so little space, I didn’t think I could fish another line through the area. Special thanks to Geronimo John for the suggestion to remove the inside AC shroud, I wouldn’t have had adequate access to the tubing runs otherwise. The picture shows the drain setup before my modifications. The front of the trailer is to the right.

Thanks again all. We stopped today at Marathon and got a new spare at Tire Kingdom/Mavis. They were awesome, we were in and out in 20 minutes and I would highly recommend the shop. We are now tucked in at Sugerloaf and no issues today. The mobile service tech is coming Wednesday afternoon, and I will definitely post an update afterwards. I will say that after I got past the shock of seeing the tire damage, my first thought was that I was running the tires with too much pressure. I appreciate comments from jd1923 and plan on researching this further. You know the whole trust but verify thing.

Thanks all for the input. My tire monitor is a TST 507. Tire pressures are a little more difficult as the tires were inflated to 65 psi when the temp at home was 60ºF in anticipation of colder weather. When we left Louisville, the temp was thirty and pressures were down to about 57 psi. Last night on the way from a several day stopover in Charleston the ambient temp was 22ºF and pressure was down to 55 psi. Temp upper limit is the factory default of 158º. i also wonder how many miles it took to wear down the tire to that extent. They trailer had been sitting for several months before we left and maybe the brake mechanicals were rusted and stuck. The trailer has about 24k miles on it with some salt air exposure in Anastasia in St Augustine and Bahia Honda. I will be interested to see what the brakes look like when the mobile tech removes the drum. Hopefully the trip tomorrow to the keys goes smoothly!. We absolutely feel like we dodged a bullet today and have said our thanks.

We arrived at Ft Lauderdale on the way to the Keys today and noted a severe flat spot on one tire worn into the steel plys. We have a TST tire monitor and never had a high temp warning and fortunately the tire is still holding pressure. Brakes didn’t feel hot and tire at arrival was same temp as all the others. Changed the tire, and brakes seem to work fine and no obvious bearing issues with hand rotation. We are getting a new tire in Marathon tomorrow and a mobile service tv tech is coming to look over the brakes on Wednesday. Trailer has about 27k miles on it. Any other suggestions on what happened and what to do next.

Assuming you have Lithionics batteries, there is a battery shutoff switch on top of the actual battery that acts similar to a battery disconnect switch as it shuts down the batteries. I always make sure the solar switch is shut off when I shut down the batteries because I have concerns that incoming solar charging will damage the solar charge controller if the batteries are shut off.

Hmm sounds like a good plan. Despite my earlier admonishment that I was swearing off any further attempts at a solution, I did purchase a very long cleaning brush used to clean out sunroof drains and was going to take another run at this drain issue in Feb when we are in the keys. I will keep you informed.

I don’t know where the fuse is but I would start by removing the control panel and check the connections in the back. There may be a breaker in the panel under the small dinette on the front of the seat. Everything else on DC is working? Lights, fan? Switch on the hot water turned on? The only time I have seen my Truma display go dark is when I turn off the house batteries. Battery voltage ok?

The last time I looked into plug in soft start devices, maybe a year ago, there were some pretty mixed reviews, mostly saying that a 2000w generator wouldn’t start the AC. Maybe they got it right this time. Has anyone seen any successful reviews?

Wow did you have to be so hateful about faintly remembering cloudy weather! Louisville isn’t as bad as Detroit where we hail from originally. I remember up in Detroit the radio shows used to have a contest for how many minutes the sun would shine in the month of December. Now that we are retired we just bug out to the Keys for 4-6 weeks in the winter, so not so bad. The worst part about 75% SOC is my neurotic checking of the SOC every several days. I do after all need something to worry about. LOL

I understand concerns about best way to overwinter Lithionics batteries. The owners manual states the first option is to leave the batteries on and the trailer plugged in. The question arises what to do if the trailer doesn’t have access to power over the winter. We store our under cover (no rooftop solar input) with a 100w portable solar panel and controller plugged in to the outside zamp plug. The location of the portable panel allows it to get sunlight about 4-5 hrs/day in January. During cold and cloudy spells, the battery heaters will draw down our batteries to about 75% SOC. I emailed Lithionics and asked, is it better to turn off the batteries or leave them on during cold weather knowing that the charge from the portable solar panel sometimes has a hard time keeping up with the draw from the battery heaters. Their only reply was to send me a link to the owners manual page with storage recommendations. I usually turn our batteries off with a full charge and make sure I follow the the recommendations for how long to leave them off based on ambient temperature in the owner manual.

Thanks to @Ollie-Haus and @Patriot for good advice on the dehumidifier. It arrived at the same time as the three days of tropical rain in Charleston. I was really a game changer, so much more comfortable inside the trailer.

1390 and Oliphino, inspired by one of our favorite beers Elephino from Red Rock Brewing in SLC.

We also run the TST and have been very happy with it. It occasionally alarms with the sensor saying one of the tires is at over 200F. A Quick Look in the side view mirrors confirms this is not correct. I think this occurs because of interference from our cell phones, chargers or other electronics in the cab. We plug our repeater into the 12 cigarette style outlet about the cooktop.