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.

Ours has always made the same noise, I assume it is a cooling fan. It runs continuously when charging partial depleted batteries until full charge and occasionally for brief periods of time when fully charged. I also notice an occasional electrical hum when the cooling fan isn’t running. I have never explored trying to decrease the sound associated with the fan. You might try decreasing the breaker rating in the xantrex app and see if it makes a difference if the battery charges more slowly.

IMO it’s kinda like spending all day in the kitchen baking with out of date flour. You sure would hate to get all that work done only to discover it was bad!

That is a great way to do things, as an avid mountain biker I always cringe when I see bikes strapped to the front of some TV, ripping down the interstate at 75MPH behind a gravel truck. Lol. The only thing worse is seeing bikes flop around on the back of a 30’ trailer like a fish on the end of a line out of water.

I have always been afraid to mount my bikes on the front of the TV. Too many bugs and other road hazards. I have been very happy carrying my bikes on a low bed rack mounted above my Retrax bed cover. The front of the rack has two rocky mounts for the thru axles, the rear trays are from Voodoo. I made the bed rack with components from various venders. I have to remove the front wheels for travel, but have full bed capacity except for the bed consumed by the Retrax roll box.

Thanks @Galway Girl I am assembling the materials for a fix next week!

Thanks @Galway Girl I am assembling the materials for a fix next week!

Awesome and thanks. I’ll get busy?

Sorry to reanimate an old thread, but my large support block fell off the propane cover on our last trip and by some miracle was balanced on one of the cross members on the bottom of the propane enclosure. I’m planning steps to reattach it and had some questions for those who have done this before. It seems that everyone has used epoxy but has anyone used a methyl methacrylate adhesive instead? It seems as if surface prep doesn’t need to be as meticulous if MMA is used instead of epoxy. For those that used epoxy, how rigorous does the surface prep need to be? I plan on removing all the old adhesive, lightly sanding both surfaces and then washing with water and the isopropyl alcohol. Would this surface prep suffice for epoxy use? Thanks in advance for the help and safe travels.

I had the same issue occur but was luckily able to wiggle the switch out wo removing the panel. I also happened to the bathroom light switch. I was initially confused because the pump would only turn on with the switch outside the bathroom near the thermostat.

So I think the Aventa is designed to drain condensate onto the roof unless the option condensate drain kit is installed, which is on my trailer. I regret I didn’t take any pics when I had my cover off but the picture from the manual may help. You have been in your unit so hopefully you can decipher the image. The upper image is looking down on the unit and there are two small holes marked 1 and 2. The oval hole (1)is the overflow and the round hole (2) is the opening to the condensate drain tube if installed. The lower image is looking at the unit from below and cannot be seen with the Aventa installed as the lower surface is only an inch or so above trailer shell. The short quarter circle track leading from (1) on the lower image, is the track of the optional drain tubing. I agree that the condensate pan is very shallow and it is not how I would have designed the system. Because the pan is shallow and the ridge between the round condensate drain hole and the oblong overflow is only a few millimeters, the drainage is very sensitive to leveling of the trailer. I also think that level for my Aventa and level for my trailer are slightly different, just for added complexity. Despite my pledge not to, I suspect I will probably take another run at getting my port side drain unobstructed. On the other hand, I am delighted that this is my only complaint regarding my Oliver. What a fantastic trailer.