jd1923

My mistake GJ, I had not remembered the post migrated to comparing the Toyota 4.7L and 5.7L engines. The 5.7L must be a beast! Best wishes, JD

Do that. We have a simple 1" drip edge on the curbside and do not get streaks. Nothing on the streetside, it gets streak. If I was to ever get our Oliver polished and waxed or otherwise coated, I would put new drip edge on BOTH sides.

Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Tynulox-Copper-Electroplating-Jewelry-Plating/dp/B0B9NF3X1T/?th=1 This is the cheapest one I could find on Amazon today. This would make two adequate 4" bars. When I did this in an older installation, I drilled two 5/16" holes in each end and then used heat shrink to somewhat insulate the length of the bar.

Agreed, I do not see power switches. In your second pictured I copied almost every device is a fuse or the obvious breaker. This wiring is foreign to me, nothing like our hull built in late 2015. God love OTT, that they would install the display to your Progressive Industries EMS under the bed! Are you kiddin' me, now I have seen all in Ollie-land! 🤣 In later hulls they put the display in the attic which is almost as bad, without having to lift a bed! Yep, after you plug into shore power, run as fast as possible into your Oliver, open the Attic door, see that all is good, and then go back outside to get back to what you were doing! As far as you main fuse, and as Dan wrote above, you likely have one and Dan did not change that part. He just added the shut-off switch to the ground. Yours is likely OK too, but who knows for sure until you chase it down. If you follow your 4/0 positive cable after it enters the hull, on the left side of your battery bay, you likely have a 250A ANL fuse as we do in our hull. See my pic. This can only be seen if you open the rear dinette seat, get your head in there and look up at the opening in front of the pantry! 🤣

Flood away! Any and all the questions you have are good. 😂 Your are correct in the second statement I quoted. Either a shorty cable or some use a copper bar. The second picture you copied, I believe is Dan's @tallmandan. This is the more common wiring, where you fuse the positive side and switch the ground side. Please provide pics of your battery installation and your Zamp setup. I've never seen the OTT Zamp install. In our older hull we have the Blue Sky SC. OTT installed a Blue Sea switch on the feed coming into the charger and a breaker between the SC and the positive bus. It would surprise me if one year or so later OTT went to the Zamp and installed it with neither a switch or a breaker (you only need one) at all! But who knows? Those who have the Zamp SCs please chime in. Love to see a picture of it. Best wishes.

I believe @Dirt Duff has the 4.7L which was the standard V8 in older Toyotas. Newer Tundras, which are certainly bigger and heavier, have the 5.7L which must be more powerful. We have the same 4.7L in our 2008 Lexus GX470, hence the model number. The GX will get up and go, being 100s of lbs lighter than the next gen GX, but it doesn't have a feeling of torque. The Tundra could be geared differently though. It's all in the gearing!

There was a little hiccup getting into the Sheyenne National Grassland. The last 3 miles were dirt and it had been raining everywhere. Given the condition it drove like a single-lane road. Then up ahead were train tracks with a hill to climb to get over them and strange thing was the dirt up at the tracks was muddy black dirt! I was worried in getting over it and since we are running with a 2WD truck, I thought to get a little more speed leading up to it. Wow, first time towing the Oliver we fishtailed at the crest and when the truck went one way, the Oliver went the other. Since I was brought up driving in snow, I gently turned into the direction of the spin and after my heart moved up into my throat for a few seconds, all was good. Whew! The first picture was taken the next morning going the opposite direction. It shows the mud that hit the Oliver, but look behind the Oliver to see the train tracks on the hill and the muddy section. Then look even more closely and you can see the tire skid marks made by the Oliver the evening before! Good thing on the way back it was a soft glide downhill over the tracks. So we're driving an hour north to get to Fargo and as soon as we got on I-29N I said to Chris, "Try to find a truck wash." I was thinking the kind of place that has a tall booth and a pressure-washer, the DIY kind of wash. Turns out it wash a full-service truck wash. This is the best invention! I walked in first to see if they wouldn't mind washing our non-commercial vehicle. Then waited in line for 20 minutes with 18-wheelers fore and aft. Not only the mud on the rear of the truck and the entire Oliver, but after 2400 miles on the road we had bug splatters all over both fronts. I paid to clean both TV and TT with an under-carriage wash. This was the absolute BEST $75 investment I've made for the Oliver! Works well in our budget vs. that $3K CGI detailing. Pics attached of Dirty Ollie and Happy Ollie! 🤣

We ended up in the Sheyenne National Grassland in southeastern North Dakota at Hankinson Hills Campsite and what a beautiful place. 😂 Amazing! The green and golden pasture views with cross-fencing like a Civil War battlefield! We drove up just after one trailer had parked, two of us in 25 campsites. They took their loop and we took the other. A little later, three girls with two trucks and horse trailers came to camp and pulled in next door to us. We walked over to say hello and what beautiful people with their draft/show horses. These 3 women is their 30s had never traveled out of North Dakota in their lives! Chris and Kayla are pictured below. We would have stayed 2-3 nights but wanted to get to Fargo the next morning and then head west in search of sunshine again...

We've been moving slowly the last few days, family can do that to you. Looking for meat stores and country markets and we had Walleye for lunch on 4 consecutive days, love it! 😂 The 5th day, not finding of a worthwhile establishment, we cooked grass fed burgers tailgating in the back parking lot of America's best, the Dollar General! 🤣 On the road again... From Brainerd we headed to Fargo and then made a detour south and found a treasure... 😂

So... Before leaving Brainerd MN and heading west, I thought to watch the movie Fargo! Streamed it on Amazon Prime and after half watching it, last time in the late 90s, we had no idea it took place mostly in Brainerd Minnesota! 🤣 Like the movie Fargo, the next few days would take some time, but I promise nobody we know ended up in the chipper-shredder!

It’s likely the age difference between our hulls. If you keep up with yours every year or two they may stay nice!

Yeah, I would do that too! But not what OTT installed years ago. The screen is bulky and low res, and not sitting on my dash. Do I remember correctly, powered by a cigarette lighter plug? Mine has been in a box since we got our Oliver 2 years ago. Except for our Victron inverter and multiple charger systems, total rewire of all things electrical, a bunch of sensors and apps, powered water and waste valves and a few other items, like our Samsung A/V system… Our Dodge and Oliver are mainly old-school! 🤣

That's the real difference. We hope to travel so not to use the awning, nor the air conditioner for that matter! It's 52F cloudy with light rain here in Brainerd MN today. Yes, the awning could have helped for the rain, if I put it up when we got here yesterday. But, we were hearing thunder and you can't trust to leave it out overnight in these conditions. Get stuck in a burst of wind and downpour trying to manually retract it. I imagine that wouldn't be fun, so ours just doesn't get used.

Us too, we never use our manual awning. Tried it once to know how to extend it, and since it was such a pain to do so, I haven't wanted to open it again. If we had the powered model, I would have used it on this rainy morning for a little protection at the doorway when we took our dog out for morning business. Also if we had the powered model, in a heartbeat I would rewire it to bypass the auto-retract feature. I dislike features that idiot-proof for idiots! People should realize when it's windy and know to retract a power awning when leaving the campsite. 🤣 Last time this subject came up, I offered all who complained of their powered models to trade for our dependable manual awning in like new condition. We got no takers.

We moved out of the Midwest 26 years ago and there were two things I had forgotten about, one bad and one good. The bad are the huge storm fronts that can come through slowly and sometimes just sit for what seems to be FOREVER! Low pressure started with the storm that came through central Kansas. Then we caught up to it again the next day in Nebraska. And then it was still there ALL through Iowa and after two rainy days at Wilkinson Pioneer Park near Mason City Iowa it also covered most of Minnesota (so far). Fortunately we only had 3 rainy days but we have not seen the sun in 12 days! Let me tell you, this is difficult for us who live in sunny Arizona. Non-descript GRAY skies. You can't make out clouds, it's just a pale shade of gray. I remember a year in Chicago about 1980 when the Chicago tribune headline stated 45 days of gray. That was during the winter though, the first 12 days of June being nothing but gray, wow! The good one I had forgotten was how large and tall deciduous trees can be in the Midwest. Over the last 20 years we've lived in AZ, Central TX and S FL. No tall trees in these locations except for Ponderosa pines in AZ. Every town in Iowa, the pretty houses are surrounded by huge tall trees. Then we got to Chris' sister's home in Farmington MN. This was our best campsite so far. A private little spot in the woods along their driveway a couple hundred yards before their lakefront home. We spent 4 overnights with family here. We left today and drove up to Brainerd MN, staying Gull Lake Rec Area another ACOE park. Drizzle and gray again today. Just staying here one night. The plan is to boondock in the Chippewa NF for the weekend, but... If it's raining to the north when we wake up, I'm driving west to Fargo ND or further west as far as we must to see the sun again! 🤣

Most of us suggested no but you can just make it, if that's what you want. However, the mountains of the Pacific NW is not an easy traverse. I have an older Ram Diesel and wish it had more than a 4-speed trans and an exhaust brake like modern diesel trucks have today. The mountains we travel through are not an easy climb for the trans and not as easy descend on the brakes. I also upgraded wheels an inch larger to upgrade to larger brakes of the next gen Ram, big help. I believe the 600 LB number is subtracting the average weight of a full 5 passenger load from the total available 1421 LBS. Another thing from your tire pressure label. Same on our GX, Toyota puts P-rated tires on these trucks, P stands for passenger cars. It's a must with towing to upgrade to LT tires. Our GX now has LT265/70R17 Load Range C tires and if I was going to tow with it regularly I would have purchased Load Range E instead.

Simple answer, NO. When we purchased our Oliver EII two years ago, I was hoping to pull it with our ‘08 Lexus GX470. So, same engine with some frame differences and ours has completely rebuilt Eibach suspension, new springs shocks, CV axles, everything. I installed a Redarc brake controller and this GX has the tow package. I pulled the Oliver around town. The Oliver was tossing the rear of the GX left and right, up and down, btw with the Andersen WDH attached. Came home and I looked at Chris, “Honey, we need to buy a truck.” She nodded, yes in agreement. Several owners do this, that or the other to make their half-ton truck or even an SUV work. Do yourself a favor and get a 3/4 ton truck with long bed so you can carry what you need now and through the years. Our Oliver was 6400 LBS first camp out, thinking we must be a couple hundred more today. Our truck has 8,800 LB GVWR. BTW, when I did my test drive, third row seats in the GX were removed, rear cargo area empty. The Oliver was also pretty much empty, fridge closet cabinets pantry, were all empty. It’s better to feel you have AMPLE capacity, not close to advertised limits. Sorry.

Having done our last year, I do not believe the freezer would help. It will make them stiff and hard to manage. The second part of this sentence is certainly true. I started at the bottom pushing and pushing to compact the rubber. In the end, I cut it to what looked like almost an inch long and pushed it all in the channel. We all have or had the 1” gap from a lazy original installation. Buy the black stock. I soaked our original white ones in bleach overnight and it did not remove any of the mildew. I did not try a mildew remover as suggested above. I wanted new black stock and for under $100 they look great and should stay nice since they’re not white!

From the outside these windows look sleek! Inside view, not so much. That’s a lot of black frame for our white interiors.

Thanks for this Patriot. I've been wanting to add front and rear porch lights. I'll buy two of these for this purpose. A front porch light for unhitching if we get somewhere late or need something out of the back of the truck at night. I'll want switch outside next to the jack switches and will have to figure out how to get wiring between the hulls to the new light. The switch below the doghouse will be easy. I want a rear porch light too since there is no light pointing that direction. I'll likely use the "Rear Camera" switch for that since we don't use the camera and it seems odd to have a switch for that purpose anyway. The rear will be an easy installation since there is already switched power for the rear camera to use. With these lights, mounting two new lights at the same height (measure up from hull seam), we'd have 6 lights separately switch in the 4 directions and the install would look OEM. I agree with your idea of lighting up the place with individually switched porch lights for safety needs. We don't use the porch lights unless we want the light to extend outwards. Happy our hull has separate Entry and Porch light switches. Our older hull also has the older dim Courtesy lights which I noted at the Texas Rally, our neighbors Courtesy lights were easily twice as bright. If not, I would do what @Ollie-Haus has done with Z-brackets. Beautiful work, smoothly cut with radius corners, nicely painted, excellent! 😂

Yes, there was just a thread on the wiring of the jack switch (link below). And these switches go bad regularly. What you described is very likely a switch that needs replacing. Also, everybody should carry a simple spade jumper like pictured below. The Oliver has many toggle switches installed and this simple jumper can be used as a temporary override. I had a brake pedal switch go bad on a Class-C which would not allow me to move the auto trans gear selector out of park. We were stuck right were we had parked. I used a jumper like this to bypass the switch which allowed us to drive an hour or two into the next town to get this common replacement switch at Napa. They also would likely have a replacement toggle switch for the jack. Nice little tool to have handy. I made one when we had the brake switch failure and have carried it with ever since. Used it once when the Oliver had a bad water pump switch under the pantry which allowed the switch under the bath vanity to work.

Test it on a 15A household circuit.

Happy 50th to Oliver friends John & Susan! 😂

Well we just hit 26 pages. I remember asking the Mods to close this thread after 12 pages, but it was not my thread to close. Most of the additions I've read here in the last 10-15 pages are slight variations of the comments and questions made in the many pages before. I just reviewed pages 1-2. And yep, that's all you need to know on this subject. Except that a few pages later we learned that the Alcan springs are actually rated at 2750 vs. 2000 lbs. There was the same concern on page 2 about this rating being too much. I had that concern early but no anymore. We're on a long road trip where we have not before towed so many highway miles. Our OEM springs are in very good condition, no sag, still nicely arced and perhaps Dexter used better steel in 2015 than more recently. Who knows but htey're in excellent shape and no rust given where we live. When the other day, I crossed railroad tracks that were on about a 30 degree angle to the road, I watched our Oliver in the side view mirror. The Oliver waddled like a duck going over those tracks, side-to-side, the top of the Oliver swayed a good 1 1/2 ft like a pendulum both ways! These springs are under-rated, as the Alcan rep stated. It's crazy that this is our 2nd longest thread, just behind "Where's Ollie" at 28 pages! This truly means not enough of you are posting travel pics! 🤣

As Bill @topgun2 mentioned, “right where you connect your hose into the boondocking port” the rear hose bib itself. If it wobbles, it needs tightening. There is a hex opening inside, maybe a 1/2” (13mm) hex? Not certain of size. When we bought our Oliver used 3 of 4 were loose, and since I have the correct Allen key in our tool bag for when needed again.