jd1923

David, @Patriot should chime in. He prefers mounting the wet bolts, Zerk fittings to the inside. You get full clearance but the down side is you have to crawl under the trailer to lube the suspension. I prefer mounting the wet bolts in the standard direction, facing out, but then I replace the straight fitting with a 45-degree Zerk fitting to get the required clearance. I usually have some reason to remove the wheels every year or two and always lube the suspension at that time anyway. Your old suspension likely has 6mm x 1 threads on the Zerks. I'm pretty sure the Alcan wet bolts use 1/4" x 28 fittings. You can verify this with Alcan. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQBPTK3Y/?th=1 Get one of these too, and many of us use a battery-powered grease gun. I have the Dewalt model with the LockNLube coupler attached and just the other day, I was able to lube the suspension on my truck in minutes! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H7LPKKU/?th=1

Yes, the monsoon season, late July through September has chance of flash floods, but it would also be > 110F! Will soon be in the dry season, Q2 starting with April winds! It’s so BRIGHT up here, my eyes hurt after 3 days! Even with back to the sun, the Oliver looks like a high-powered light bulb! Maybe should have parked with curbside to the north. Chance of rain this week is 0-0-0-0-0-0-0!!!

ABS (black) pipe is for waste lines, much less expensive pipe. PVC is used for fresh water and sometimes exposed sink drains, etc. You can use PVC in place of ABS like in your Oliver plumbing, but ABS is only used for gray and black waste plumbing, not rated for fresh water.

I suggest Nylok nuts and washers, no loctite needed. First do the lift as @David and Gail has showed above. Drill a second hole, top of slot, hand tight both bolts. Also, the angle of your two support beams seems greater than in other pics. The base looks off angle (notice angle of base not square with floor in your first picture). Check below where it should be welded to the frame.

Similar outcome shown by the “Grand Adventurer” RV guy, the YouTube video I posted above. You have 1 of 3 bad and he had 2 of 6 bad. Both of you noticed your SOC was not what it used to be! Good test Ken! I still have a drawer full of incandescent GE Reveal bulbs at home, for the health of our eyes and heart!

Battery tenders on 4 LA batteries down to 9V will take several days to charge as you are witnessing. interesting how most Olivers are different. Your hull #99 and our #113 both have Blue Sky SCs, but my breaker and shunt were wired on the right side. Never seen a 120VAC panel where breaker #1 isn’t the 30A main and ours has only 6 breakers. They wired the microwave with the 110V outlets on the same breaker. Yours is written “Charger” they wrote “Converter” on ours! Since I replaced the converter with a Victron inverter/charger, I now use the 6th breaker for what was the microwave circuit, now an air-fryer/oven. I still have the original converter installed as a backup just in case, with the hot/black wire disconnected. Every Oliver is unique, yet many similarities. I use many 2017 electrical and plumbing schematics that were not available for 2016 and they’re often close enough to figure things out! I’d say new batteries are in your future and there are many posts on bettering the electrical wiring and other systems.

Yep, ours are ABS. And don’t the new Olivers have electric waste valves and something different for the pull handle for the bathroom gray? I replaced that one with electric but an electric valve would not fit on the black tank waste valve where they plumbed ours without replacing all the ABS.

Here's a couple more of the campsite and I have supplied GPS coordinates. We are a couple miles past the staging area. There are campsites at the staging area, one large flat one with picnic table and fire ring. Many RVs were also camping south of the entrance down Eagle Eye Rd. To get here, you'd have to tow down and up 4 narrow washes. Some may not want to pull their Olivers through these washes! I descend slowly, then when my truck is at the bottom I let off the brakes, the weight of the Oliver then pushes the truck through and then quickly hit the pedal to pull up, some were very steep! 😎 There were two other nice campsites on the way to ours and only one past this location. Yesterday we drove up some, to the turn-off to the Monterey Mine. The maps on On-X Offroad are good. With 2WD and not wanting to air down, this was enough. It gets very steep and sketchy the rest of the way to the top. Some of you, airing down with a capable 4x4 would have no problem getting to the top. I understand from the top you can see ALL of SW AZ, from Phoenix, all the way to California, south to Mexico and north to the heights of the Prescott NF! Harquahala Mountain at 5600 FT is the tallest peak in all of SW Arizona. I wish we could travel with the Oliver and somehow bring our 2018 Textron Havoc SxS with us! She would fly to the top with ease!!! 🤣

It's interesting how OTT installed your black tank waste valve, laying on an angle in the center of the area under the front dinette seat! Mine was installed straight up vertically in the corner. There are pluses and minuses of both. Further up and on an angle, the pull on the 144” cable would be smoother but it takes away from the storage space. I had to replace our cable since it got kinked from the hard angle (see pic below), and even with a brand new cable it's still not easy to pull. We have a lot of storage though, where a large basket fits nicely down there! Every Oliver is truly unique.

Chris, I truly commend you for your recent upgrades and attention to detail… Promise me one thing, when you retire, don’t get lazy! 🤣

Getting there! When you're home, I would turn OFF the onboard converter (there should be a breaker for it in the AC panel) and try another charger. Perhaps some of the comments re your converter could be true. I use this model at home and always travel with it. It has a repair mode too for what happened in your case getting too low on voltage. It can be switched between LA/AGM/LiFePO4 batteries. I purchased the 10A model is fine for battery maintenance/overnight charging. They also have higher amperage models (larger and more expensive). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07W3QT226/?th=1

We'll have 4 peaceful overnights in this beautiful and mostly quiet BLM lands. Quiet except for occasional UTVs passing by to run the shelf road to the top of Harquahala Mountain! (3 groups so far on this Sunday.) We got 100 yards off the main road and all I hear are the insects of the Sonoran Desert (perhaps too dry here for many birds). Not one sound overnight! Up close and personal with the Cholla and Saguaro cactus! 75F this afternoon and should reach 85 in a couple days! Drinking coffee this morning, in shorts, shirt off, basking in the Arizona sun. From I-10, halfway between Phoenix and Quartzsite, take Salome Rd to Eagle Eye Rd north. Or take Eagle Eye Rd south off US Hwy 60 at Aguila AZ. The roads are all paved until you get to the staging area and the road to the top is of course dirt, where decades ago there was a Smithsonian observatory. Our tow vehicle is only 2WD and I'm not much for hairy shelf roads anyway! I'd like to drive up close enough to hike the rest of the climb. We'll check it out soon! We each have a good book to read and getting some sun and warmth (got cold and snowing in Prescott) and much needed rest, is all we need to finish up this trip! 😎

Lead acid batteries should charge up to 12.6V. Yours being down to 9V and on charger overnight only getting to 12.2V, means it’s time to replace them. I see your hull #99, wow! This must be the second or maybe 3rd set of LA batteries. No time like the present to upgrade to LiFePO4 batteries! 😎

I'm sure when Dave logs in, he will have some good advice here! I'm thinking the caulk on our older hulls is silicone. I've removed a lot of it except over the wheel wells. Whenever we tow on dirt roads you can see dirt collect where there is and was silicone. I also do not think silicone caulk will accept paint.

David, I believe Bill's note was addressed to my comment (not yours) which made me think. So I removed a sentence I had written that was in poor taste. Your post will help me in my repair and others who may have this issue. You demonstrated excellent work which others can follow. Wow, 110 days in your first year, 90% Boondocking! Those are good numbers! We have 150 overnights in two years 60% Boondocking. Our percentage will go up now that we can run our A/C off the inverter! The only reason to plug in was to run the A/C when we ran into hot weather more often than we liked!

The center of gravity of the standard models (75-84) is VERY LOW and nothing else rides as they do. The have a faux tank and the actual fuel tank is between and under your knees. The boxer-style engine also keeps weight low. This "skillful rider" as you wrote had a great machine at his hands. Summer of 1986, when I purchased mine, my cousin and I drove to NYC for the anniversary celebration for the Statue of Liberty and to visit family. Taxi cabs were on strike, so the streets in Manhattan were empty, an odd site. I rode a 5-borough cruise myself one day. Driving through Brooklyn on a 4-lane 45 MPH road, a women in a Camaro pulled out from a stop sign instantly and she then stopped directly in my path. I stomped on the rear brakes followed by the front HARD and the bike started into a skid! I stopped sideways right at her drivers door, on bike still standing, yelled profanities into her open window, then goosed the throttle and pulled around her in an instant, my heart beating fast! 😎 The years before I rode a Yamaha XS-850 Special. It was a taller bike with it's 3-cylinder engine straight up, fuel tank up above. I realized that if I had not traded up and was still riding the Special, I would have crashed directly into the driver's door of her Camaro. They did handle extremely well. But years later as they added fairings and bags and 100s of LBS they weren't the same. Same thing happened re Harley full dressers.

Thank you, Bill! 1984 was a landmark year for the Goldwing mark! It was the first year of the 1200, and the last year of what was called in that year alone “the Standard!” All since have been full-dressers, OEM fairings, saddlebags, etc. Goldwings from the GL1000 first year in 1975 to the GL1100 in 1983 were naked bikes and if you wanted to dress out your ride you would add Vetter accessories. I had purchased one new back in the day, and after 20 years, it needed work, sold it when we left VA to move west to AZ! Found this pristine bike with only 6K miles on eBay in 2008! There is not another example like it! 😎l

David, excellent work and thank you for proving my hypothesis re the bottle jack and that some lift will be required to set the battery box straight. I’ll be working mine soon even though the battery door on ours has been straight for 10 years. I believe the angle re the two beams is due to the curve of the hull, all pics show the same. I’ll bet, you did not expect this on your brand new Oliver! Yours should still be under warranty for anything that may come up.

These are very good reasons. We're all different and we all have choices. I am the DIY guy in anything automotive, electrical and mechanical systems. For example, I only pay for an alignment after I've replaced every suspension part myself. I learned solar/inverter system installations on a Bigfoot Class that had none to start. Installed rooftop panels using only VHB tape, drilling only two 1/4" holes for the wires, a dab of Dicor on each. Installed a PD 1800 KW inverter/charger and customized the AC power panel to be a split bus panel (sawed the bus in two, one for A/C and one for inverted circuits)! The graphic below from PD gave me the insight I needed to do so. "Should we ever sell? No way, never! 🤣 I still have my 1984 Goldwing Standard restored to factory condition. Two Lexus, a 1992 SC400 and '08 GX470 both restored. Call our son Adam lucky, as none of these, especially our Oliver, will ever be sold. They will one day be his, always kept in the family. When you put 100s or in this case 1000s of hours in our now amazing hull #113, she's here to stay, and should in its present condition outlive me! That hull named XPLOR has had only the best of love and care! Likely the best looking, best outfitted hull out there! My bet is... David will never sell! 😎

First time here, we met this guy! 😎

4th visit to Lost Dutchman. I’ll make it up Flat Iron one day (got halfway up last time as it was getting dark)! Came this weekend since the PPA Pickleball pro tournament is in Mesa this week, only a half hour away! What a view! Hangar steaks, baked and sweet potato with asparagus, cooked over the fire ring! 😎

If it was me, I'd look in the aftermarket! Took me a quick search to find this product. I assumed a 1" diameter but did not measure ours. This or something like it would likely work fine: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3PKNY47/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B0D3PKNY47&th=1 CAUTION: You should determine cause for your separation. Check your support beam below the box. View it from both sides, streetside bed (see my picture above) AND look from under the rear dinette seat. OTT forgot a weld on one of my jack brackets. They also forgot to finish this support beam install! Hard to believe, but true. I've compared ours with some of Oliver friends. The others have two bolts which is mandatory! I have to get in there again, drill and add a second bolt! With batteries out, most of the weight off the battery tray, from underneath see if there is movement of the support beam. I plan to remove my batteries AGAIN. Then get a bottle jack under there to see if the support can be raised just a little. The fact that this single bolt is at the bottom of the groove shows it's at the lowest setting. Likely the beam/tray should be raised some for proper support. Then I'll tighten the single bolt installed, drill a second hole through the top of the slot to add a 2nd bolt, then torque down both. Thank goodness we have no door separation, but those who have should investigate the support beams below. Some have reported missing nuts, or nuts falling off the bolts. (How does a Nylok nut fall off a bolt? It doesn't. It was likely laid there never threaded on. Go figure.)

This thread show an excellent inverter/battery upgrade installed by a local service company. If you are going to DIY, I've documented installation posts that show these installations step-by-step. You asked, "I assume the Xantax 2kw was the inverter or?" Yes, in my case you can see that on page 1. No more Xantrex 2KW inverter (only) with the small PD charger in the power panel (kept it there for back-up). No more lead acid... Now the Victron MP2 and 900 Ah (3x 300) Epoch LiFePO4. You will find mine is a simpler installation. Did not spend on Lynx products and I did not want a cabin screen (we seek battery info 98% of the time outdoors, while towing or from the living room of our home). IMO, Bluetooth apps are all you need, but many like having screens. When doing so, I also removed all fuses and breakers from under the streetside bed so they can be conveniently accessed under the rear dinette seal. The best addition that several Oliver owners have added is the DC-to-DC Charger! Every time we tow we add at least 40 Ah for every hour towing. This is about 4x what we get from 320W in rooftop solar. See this for the complete installation. => Hope this helps! 😎

Hello @Mroth, this is not truly my area of expertise, but given how many holes are drilled in OTT installation processes, and that I have removed many of the old-tech products on our Oliver, I've filled way too many holes! I've used this epoxy based product and the color match is good. It's just a touch whiter than our older hull and I've read somewhere that the newer hulls are a tone brighter. I would say this product may work well for your purpose in the shower. It's simple and inexpensive. https://www.amazon.com/Marine-Tex-RM305K-White-oz/dp/B0014419V0/ I have also plugged the holes made for the TV mount, the drain pull handle in the bathroom, the door hook outside, both cameras and everything in these pics (see before and after).

So the Max version has some new technology, and costs more. The older version tech works fine. IMHO, I would not want any battery model in view Hardwired it can be hidden under the dinette or anywhere else out of view. And why change batteries when we all have 100s of AHs on board. Took me 10 min to install under the dinette given you have the DC fuse panel and ground bus right there! 😎 I’ve been writing LevelMatePRO and Geoff @Snackchaser wrote a good correction above. The wired version is the LevelMatePRO+ (plus version). He has a cool way to wire the PRO. Maybe it could work for the MAX version too!