jd1923

This maintenance can be completed in 2 hours (by the young experienced mechanic), or you could take most of the day! Have fun and pride in your Oliver! Take your time. I did the curbside yesterday and did the other side today (not young anymore, like splitting tasks across days). The second side went very fast today, done in only 90 min having the tools out and ready. This is just how I worked our suspension maintenance, in how it made sense to me, based on my automotive experience, not Dexter nor OTT approved! IMHO this maintenance should be conducted annually, or perhaps bi-annually for those who tow 10K +/- miles in a year. Some may work this routine every two years. Following is a suggested 10-Step Suspension Maintenance procedure: 1) On level ground, jack up one side of the trailer, using the rear leveler jack, while the Oliver is hitched to the tow vehicle (mandatory for safety). 2) Spin each tire to see if it rolls freely. Listen carefully for any unusual sounds. Try to wobble each wheel left to right (3-9 clock positions) and top to bottom (6 - 12) to observe any free-play. There should be no observable free-play with the Nev-R Lube bearings. 3) Remove the lug nuts on both wheels with impact (no impact, loosen with tires on ground). Place a jack stand under rear axle, close to wheel, for safety since your body will be under the trailer to do some of this work (see pic1). 4) Grease all six (6) wet bolts, plus two (2) grease fittings on the EZ Flex. Use a power grease gun if available with a LockNLube coupler attached. Add just enough grease to see some ooze from an edge. Wipe up all excess grease. A straight-blade screwdriver helps to remove old grease from recessed areas. Wipe grease fittings before and after and place caps back on (I don’t use caps). 5) Torque all suspension bolts to Alcan specs. 90 ft-lb for U-bolts, 80 ft-lb for the EZ Flex center bolt and both end-points, and 65 ft-lb on the shackle wet-bolts. The U-bolts will set at some point where they will not need further tightening. They rust into place and once this occurs, they’re done and you will not need to check again in future service (not true for the wet-bolts). I go lighter torque than Alcan specs on the wet-bolts, 70 and 58 ft-lbs which is an eighth (12%) lighter. The 80 and 65 numbers seem high to me. 6) Check drag on the drums. They should contact the shoes ON and OFF when spinning (shoes installed are not perfectly round). If they do not drag at all, the self-adjuster is not tightening properly (see pic2 brake assembly, adjuster at bottom). Mine were all dragging just right on like-new axles. There are two inspection ports on the backside. Unfortunately, there is no way to reach the gear to adjust it, due to the Oliver wide leaf/shock absorber plate. If adjusters are not working, the hub/drum must be removed (see step 8). 7) Pull the trailer emergency brake switch and turn the drums until they stop (to ground magnet). Check amperage draw at each wheel, placing amp meter clamp around ANY single wire behind wheel. Amperage should be 3A +/- without much difference between wheels. My LF wheel was 3.1A and the other three all read 2.8A, the two main brake wires coming out of the streetside Oliver hull read 6.1A front and 5.8A rear. These numbers look good enough to me! 8] Now the question is, do the brakes need a full inspection? I would say no for the first 2 years, then later with enough miles towed (>25K miles). Perhaps work a full inspection after 3 years. Then skip year 4 and do another full inspection year 5. Something like that! Clean brake dust without internal inspection: Use compressed air to blow through all openings of the braking plates to remove all shoe dust from the interior of the brake drums. Wear safety glasses and stay upwind from the cloud of brake dust. Blow throughout until you see only clean air. Full inspection of trailer brakes: Remove the bearing dust cap, the small outer circlip and spindle nut, then slide the drum off. Use compressed air to remove all brake dust (Brakleen spray unnecessary). Make sure shoes are clean, free of grease, clean if necessary (sand shoes lightly). Check shoe thickness, There is not much material there to begin with (Dexter shoes new have only 0.18" or 4.5mm material). They will look thin but when wearing evenly should be good for many more miles. Check the action of the shoes by pulling the magnet to see all is working as designed. Replace shoes if necessary, or replace the entire braking plate assembly, which is bolt-on and economical. If you have enough miles to replace shoes, the drums should be turned or replaced. Replacing shoes without doing so would result in poor trailer braking performance. Drum assemblies with new bearings are very expensive! The Nev-R Lube bearings are warranted for 5 years or 100K miles (our hull will not clock 100K mile in the next 10 years)! Some who tow a lot may replace bearings every 5 years. I will carry replacement bearings and tools with me to replace as needed, as they could fail at any time or last many, many years. Then replace the drum, washer and spindle nut. To retorque, mount the wheel, lower the tire to just touching the ground and torque to 155 ft-lb. Then replace the circlip and dust cap. Remove wheel again to mount center caps, though many of us go without center caps so that hub temps can be checked at stops while towing. 9) Remove gravel from the tread of both tires, using a thin flat-blade screwdriver, while inspecting for tread wear, tire defects and foreign objects. I do this with All of our vehicles, every time wheels are removed for any reason. I’ve found many screws and other sharp metal objects in tire treads, sometimes causing slow leaks that can be fixed now vs. getting worse on the highway. 10) Mount rims, lower hull to get rim close, making it easy to place wheel on studs. Use impact on light setting and snug up lug nuts evenly. Lower hull to sit on wheels, remove leveler blocks, and torque lugs to 90 ft-lbs. Repeat all 10 steps on the other side of the trailer. Let me know if I missed something or other suggestions! 😎

Alcan specs 90-80-65 ft-lbs for U-bolts/leaf end-bolts/shackle bolts. I wet with 90-70-58 which is about 12% lighter on the wet-bolts. U-bolts need the 90 ft-lbs for sure. Just my gut feeling and what I went with. No science behind it. If you go too loose, the shackles can get damaged. You will need to tow some miles and work the retorquing intervals Alcan suggests. Next time lube first then torque. Torqued wet-bolt will likely refuse grease most of the time. The brass bushing will also set into the leaf eyelets with use. Yes, everything needs to wear-in a bit. You will soon love the ride! The other day, I took a traffic circle towing at 25 MPH! I almost forgot Ollie was back there. The Oliver stood tall and proud through the turn on Alcan Springs! 😎

When first fired up, the Chill Cube in med-high fan makes about 30% of the noise of the Dometic P2. Once the cabin cools and it's variable speed compressor and fans gear down, its whisper quiet sound must be <5% of the awful P2! It's by far the quietest A/C unit I've ever heard. Wonderful easy sound for an afternoon nap in the Oliver! 😎 And for us, power requirements are very important, so to run our A/C on battery/inverter.

OTT needs to get with it! Brinkley installs the Furrion Chill Cube. 😎 That’s 9 less than 3 feet from a freight train! 🤣

Us too. We had it for a year and used it 2-3 times on a long trip last summer. We'd rather boondock when possible or stay at a NF campgrounds, half-off with the Senior Pass. A trip to Arkansas and Missouri should be sometime in our future...

That's right Lance, but I had both wheels off on that side, weight off, suspension hanging, and still 1 of 6 wet-bolts would not take grease. Loosened the nut and turned it just a few degrees and it took grease. Not the best case but it's all I had the patience for. I retorqued it where it took grease, so maybe I get lucky next time. I'm going to service annually, always jacked-up wheels off, bearings check, greasing then torquing suspension, blowing out the brake shoe dust to keep the brakes clean inside, tightening the "self"-adjusters, checking amp draw at each wheel, etc. I'll write this up in detail when I get done with this work later this week.

Nice Bill, your new Sendel wheels are beautiful 😎 and a little stronger than their same model of 10 years ago. I was wondering why the load on mine stated 110 PSI with both 3,200 and 3,750 LBS weights listed? Yours has PSI ratings 80 / 100 and load ratings 3,300 and 3,960 LBS, so the load weights must be based on the two PSI numbers. Most of us run 45 - 55 PSI and carry 6K +/- LBS GVW. I built a weight table for our upgraded Oliver Suspension: If your still towing on OEM Dexter 1750 springs, then 7K is Max and you should worry about this common point of failure until you upgrade. Installed the 4-pack Alcan set? Then @ 2,250 each, 9,000 LBS is the Max Load. Oliver EII DOT stickers all state 7,000 GVWR anyway. If you've seen Steve's custom interior work and other additions, the weight of Hull #50 is right up there at the top in Oliver GVW! 3x may be an exaggeration, but if it's >10K then we have a 10K suspension with these upgrades, legal or not.

Started suspension maintenance today, so got a pic of the back of our wheels. I can zoom in, to see the SenDel brand trailer wheels, made in China, 6x16jj rims, 110 PSI Max, 3,200 LBS load rating.

Thank you for all your information. I really want one, but have spent too much on the Oliver already. I want the one with the grey front since I have that trim theme now. https://fogattiliving.com/products/fogatti-instashower-ultra-66-000-btu-rv-tankless-water-heater-with-grey-door I see now that without the border trim it's a 15" square. Thanks again. For your ground, what you did is fine. Or you could run a new ground wire around the back to the streetside and to the main ground bus. I have all grounds connected from here by the two 8 AWG green wires going left to the Inverter ground terminal, to the battery ground. Chassis ground is good, but direct copper wire connections are better.

Rob, what is the model # of the unit you purchased? I was seeing most new Fogatti units at 17.64" (600mm) square, but our OEM Suburban HWH is 15" square.

Just retorqued the suspension after towing 3600 miles over the last 6 months on the new D52 axles with Alcan 5-pack leaf springs. On the right side (I'll work the left side tomorrow), the U-bolts did not need tightening at 90 ft-lb (they're set, last time I'll touch these). The three main leaf (3) bolts, the EZ Flex center bolt and the two end bolts did not need tightening either (torqued to 70 ft-lb). The wet-bolt on one shackle would not take grease, so I loosened it to apply grease. All four (4) shackle-connected wet-bolts needed a bit of tightening (torqued to 58 ft-lb). All shackles and other parts looked in like-new condition. Not real concerned with rotating wet-bolts as you could see they were all fixed into a set position even though needing torque. Just loosen the nut and rotate the bolt if one is not taking grease. Torque wet-bolts after greasing. I'm going to start a maintenance thread for the Alcan/D52 Nev-R Lube setup.

Yes, the fan upgrade is imperative! I turn ours on whenever camped with sun on that entrance wall. Our old absorption fridge now works great (not so before the fans), it even keeps ice cream hard! 😎 OMG, the Beech Lane spec does state, "**The fans are about 1-1.5" thick!" How many engineers did it take to specify that?! 🤣 I'm working on Oliver suspension maintenance today, so thought I would measure for you! I measure 1 1/8" thick for the assembly, but in each corner are Allen screws and at that point they're 1 3/8".The Beech Lane dual-fan assembly fit nicely inside the top-vent cavity, but our hull is older and we have the Dometic fridge. Perhaps you also have the Norcold unit, so copy what Geoff did above. Not sure why he went with a bottom vent installation as most of us mounted the upper vent as an exhaust. Anybody need the Beech Lane product? Amazon has "Like New" right now for a very good price of $56! Best wishes, JD

No thank you. Never wanted a Jackery, like independent parts to replace if/when needed. They only running the A/C on 48V? That's what fuses are for. 🤣 I power only one jack fuse at a time, a best practice.

Yes, you'd have a DC-DC 48/12 converter! Add one of these for every 30A required in 12VDC circuits! 😎 https://www.invertersupply.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=24883&msclkid=43c410b584c71378f430794e07bd6059&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=invertersupply - shopping&utm_term=4584894771909782/

Exactly, regardless of code, wire nuts are for Residential use within junction boxes. Automobiles, trucks and trailers, anything DOT approved for highway use should use crimp connectors, or terminals with eyelet connectors screwed to a bus, relay or switch. Don't use anything else, including all the fancy cr@p you'll find, like WAGO or any other lever connectors. I toss them out when they come with an installation kit. You don't want a set screw holding stranded wire. You don't solder automotive connections either. Solder is for electronics only, it can crack with vibration. Only basic crimps will absorb vibration without harm.

I don't think the Chill Cube has an OFF setting for the compressor, always ON at low. Not certain of this, but 61F was achieved at a set temp of 72 overnight. The Follow Me feature was OFF. I turned it ON for day two, but it clouded up and highs dropped from 95F on Sunday to 78F on Monday! Testing is over until our summer heat comes. LOVE the low power consumption and the regress to whisper-level sounds once the cabin gets cool! 😎 We took a 5-week trip to Minnesota and back last June. Didn't think we would get so much heat in states like the Dakotas and Wyoming on our return, let alone travels through Kansas and Iowa in getting there. About 10 stays of the 35-day trip were miserable, because of running the Dometic A/C. To watch TV and to get asleep, I used my noise-cancelling headphones which I had from my days of business travel. In the past, they were used to reduce airplane engine noise, now a quite similar noise in that of the P2 A/C! If we had the Chill Cube installed a year ago, there would have been no complaints of hot weather on or trip, for sure! Those on the fence, scrap your P2 for anything else, though my wife Chris and I certainly recommend this product! She slept like a baby all night as it got quietly colder! 😎

It's still not hot enough for A/C performance testing. But it was 95F late Sunday afternoon in Phoenix. The Furrion Chill cube cooled the interior in minutes, the huge fan with sweep on, flowing air the full length of the Oliver. When we got in bed the system had geared down on its own, now consuming only 18A DC, 18Ah per hour overnight. The original Dometic Penguin II running at full consumed 150A! The campsite had hook-ups but I don't plug in unless we need to. The fan was running so slowly it had a light hum and a random swishing sound. We turn the sweep motion off when laying in bed so the air blows forward. With the TV on, the Chill Cube cannot be heard at all! 😎 During the night, I'm not a white noise person, preferring silence, but the light random sound it makes is truly perfect to sleep by! The thermostat first set at 68, 69, 70. later 72, The interior went from 82 to 74 in 40 min. There is a thermostat issue. Regardless of set temp, the cabin temp based on Ruuvi readings kept decreasing far below the set temp. I woke at 7 AM and cabin temp was a very COLD 61F! Reached for the remote, powered it down and rolled over. Of course it cools down at night in the desert, so little need for cooling. The A/C system seems to have a low point where it sits and keeps cooling slightly, the compressor never turning off. It seems many of these new A/C models have thermostat issues. Not too worried on this. First time in our lives that an RV A/C unit was enjoyable to run overnight, and by day, on inverter using so little power!

Where's Ollie? She's back home after a couple trips down to the Phoenix Valley lately. I used to hate the drive, especially towing, the section of I-17 that drops 2000 ft through Black Canyon City AZ. Steep and winding, narrow lanes, rough pothole ridden, sections without shoulders, always construction present, and when there's an accident, you're waiting long without an alternate. When northbound, climbing elevation, note the sign to turn off your A/C when it's hot out. With a 10% climb, there were always cars overheated, parked on the shoulder. After 2+ years of major construction, the first 40 miles heading north on I-17 is now the greatest road is Arizona. It is now a 6-lane divided highway the whole way with new Flex Lanes in the steepest section. The lanes are now full Interstate width with oversized shoulders all the way. I used to often take an extra half hour to drive up the back route, Hwy 89 through Yarnell. Today, we flew up the mountain, towing 65+ MPH the hole way home! It's the main route from Phoenix to Prescott, the Verde Valley, Sedona, up to I-40 at Flagstaff and of course the Grand Canyon. Check it out on your next trip to Arizona! 😎

Yes, I hate to see 120VAC wires hot, just capped off with a wire nut and/or tape. I want them pulled (difficult in this case) or disconnected at the source. If the HWH fuse is accessible, then you're good. I've relocated most of the "under-bed" fuses OTT installs. 😎

Yeah Rob, my head is surely not thinking clearly this week! Yes, all you need is low-amperage wiring since power is provided by LP. Given the Suburban had a 120VAC circuit breaker, I’d still want a 12VDC fuse in the panel for your new HWH! Also pull the original 120VAC wiring from the breaker panel, at least pull the black/hot wire off the breaker, so the other end at the HWH is dead. You’ll have a 120VAC breaker available if you need to add a new circuit for another 120VAC appliance! 😎 Great looking installation! Update us later on your experiences with the Fogatti tankless HWH!

New twist on this thread.. Over the last two weeks, I’ve undergone major sinus surgery after a year+ of severe sinusitis. Went down to Phoenix to see a top ENT in AZ and he worked his magic for 4 hours, OMG! We trailered the Oliver last week to Cave Creek park where the camping is very comfortable, 40 minutes from the outpatient center. Three nights here, two overnights post-surgery, relaxing in the Oliver to recoup! The Oliver truly is a survival vehicle, in fact it’s a portable intensive care unit. I felt as comfortable as being home with everything I needed at arms reach! 😎 The first night post-op was a bear! Then 6 days of agony… We towed down to Cave Creek again, two consecutive weeks. We could have just been here 10 days, but Chris and I had things to do at home. Post-op appoint yesterday, I couldn’t wait (will spare you the details). Everything went well! After a saline rinse, I feel GREAT today! We have another 2 hours here, coffee in the Sun, ‘til checkout time, then we tow 4000 ft up the mountain to return home! We will always have our Oliver for so many life experiences. Our home away from home is a wonderful retreat. I’m sure yours is too! 😎

I was thinking “new DC run” and GJ laid out the circuit logic perfectly! See what fuse and wire gauge Fogatti specs in their documentation. I would locate a spare or empty position in the 12VDC fuse panel to do this right. The last thing you want is more inline fuses under beds! This is a major appliance. Source wiring should start at the main +/- buses with the positive running through the fuse panel. 😎

Rim design really has the stems on the edge, sticking out. Got to be careful with the steel ones too!

Prior owner had installed steel valve stems on the Oliver, always been good. When I upgraded the truck with 3rd Gen Dodge wheels, I mounted with steel stems. Neither stem should fail, unless there is something about the wheel design, how the machined opening for the stem could be an issue cutting into the rubber. Question is, was the stem physically damaged or replaced because for leaking.

I did not actually measure. Height change may be up, <1” or negligible. Tongue weight should not change since distances, the 3-point geometry of the trailer has not changed. Porpoising will be minimized, so that weight up and down on the hitch will be more even.