jd1923

Would that be Thomas or Bays English muffins?

Maybe. We’d have to be chemists to be sure. I don’t use the pink stuff, but if it’s ethanol based, I would think it could react with brass or other plumbing components to produce the simple but deadly compound CO.

Is that on one set of tires?

John, just read this again… I would check your wheel bearings regarding cupped tires. In a TV it means alignment but there is no alignment on trailers. To do so, lift each wheel off ground, hands on tire at 3 and 9 o’clock positions to check if there is any shake. Turn the wheel some and shake hard a few times. If you find ANY wobble at all then the axle nut needs to be tightened. If you have packed the bearings in the last 1-2 years, just tighten the nut. If not, it’s time to clean and pack the wheel bearings. I’m not sure but thinking bad shocks or even no shocks should not affect tire wear. Shocks merely stop the pendulum effect of spring bounce. I guess excessive bounce could affect tires, though less likely than bearings.

I see the roll pin in the picture and it doesn’t look bent. What is keeping it from be driven wit a punch back into the opening. It will take 3 hands!

At the price point you could buy two extras so you could do the warranty exchange and always have two good shocks on hand. You know, I’ve owned many cargo and stock trailers 7K and 10.2K and none of them have had shocks. Are they necessary? Many Oliver Owners have 1-4 blown shocks and do not know so.

How dirty can a 1-year-old Oliver be? We got to the Texas Rally, where I thought our older hull would be the ugly duckling. Wow, there are some glossy Olivers here, some with recent CGI service. I was happy to see a couple Olivers with the dull & dirty look like ours. Don't they say, "It's what's inside that counts!"

Just checked Renewable Outdoors website where I purchased our Epoch batteries, and they did not charge tax or shipping. Then checked Epoch's website. Both have the 300A Epoch Essential back to the $999 price. Makes me glad I purchased at the right time, but not happy for others wanting to buy now. I would still wait to see Black Friday pricing and discounts since we are just weeks away.

I will certainly check out @Ronbrink's Atmos today! Sure Derek, stop by site 71 to talk. We're staying at the park today, so will be here or visiting others. I purchased Epoch during a 4th of July sale. They had just lowered the price from $999 to $899 and had 10% OFF. Last year they had 15% OFF for Black Friday. I went with Epoch to get 2x 300AH. The LiTime will likely continue to be the best price for 2x 230AH. 460AH vs. 600AH is the question, or you can do 1x 460AH Epoch Essentials (2 of the "Essential" model will not fit) as somebody here mentioned, or 2x 460AH and go all out as @rideadeuce did!

Just Campendium. Here is the listing for Yoakum County park.

Got to the Texas Rally at Inks Lake SP a couple days early. More pictures will be on the Rally thread. Spent the day today a Horseshoe Bay Resort. Adam used to play tennis tournaments here and, in the 10+ years since we had visited, they built 14 Pickle Ball courts. Marble Falls now has a brand-new HUGE H-E-B! We went to play PB today and found all the courts busy with a local tournament. If we had known, we could have entered the tournament but just spectators today!

There are a few installs documented. @Galway Girl and @rideadeuce to name a couple. Just search for keyword “Starlink.” These are not the Mini, but installation cannot be much different. I hope to buy one Dec-Jan and will document my installation. @Patriot has a recent thread on the Mini, and he is adamant on its being portable, stating the need to use it when the Oliver is camped where view of the northern sky is blocked. This is an important valid point. Mine will be installed on the tow vehicle, plugged into our Pepwave router, also installed in the TV. The Pepwave would look first to cellular signal, switching to Starlink when needed to minimize Starlink data used saving $$$. I figure that if the Oliver is blocked from the northern sky, which is rare in the SW where we do not have the tall trees of the east, I can park the TV in a better position which could be 100+ FT away and still have Wi-Fi access, broadcasted by the powerful Parsec antenna. I'm trying not to add more portable gear, the setup and tear down. Kinda sorry I invested in suitcase solar vs. another rooftop panel or just a DC-DC charger. It’s great that Starlink now has affordable options. Oh, and we have a monstrosity of a Winegard Dish Sat device, front of ours, yes bug collector, that I will remove soon. What a mess with all the screw holes OTT drilled in the roof (use 3M 4950 VHB tape).

Our TV is also a brighter white, but our TV is 24 years old and the whites are now pretty close. The front fenders and hood of the TV could use some paint too. Sunlight UV rays do take their toll. I’ve got a painter, a retired pro who has a paint booth on his property and does reasonable side jobs at half todays shop rates.

I used to truly dislike paint, like as a teenager when my mom wanted me to paint over the natural pine paneling in the stairwell and lower hallway going to my bedroom. You can never get the wood back, but of course Mom was mom, Yes Ma’am! This thread makes me feel confident in letting our fiberglass sit in the AZ sun another 1-2 years without worry or care, love it! Then when I get some $$$$ saved, I will paint it the Dodge color codes of my truck. Not selling the truck, not selling the Oliver. This would look cool and the upper shell would still be white, but a little brighter white. The picture was taken after sunset, so it’s very dark. The upper portion is bright white. Notice the center rib which looks a lot like the joint on the Oliver between upper and lower shells. This would look awesome, IMHO.

Isn’t it great that many Oliver Owners can forgo hookups for several days! 🤣

luv ya Scotty! 🤣 At times, I have to curb Chris on this issue even with our 2500 Cummins! Gotta see this movie in full, the trailer doesn’t do it justice! Also, what an AMAZING trailer, built over 70 years ago. Also crazy, pulling this beast with what I believe is a 53 Olds (1/2 ton at best). I’ll take one for $1,800, even $18K, likely today worth $18M, but it would not truly make a mountain climb in Arizona, with or without her hidden ROCKS! We’ve got to rent this again!

It’s great to be back in Texas, what a well-run state! Business is key, great schools and sports, very well kept roads and great city/county/state parks. Not all the public lands of the west, but so much more open space than back east. We moved to Georgetown Texas in 2006 and moved out of Texas end of November 2014, so it’s been 10 years. I’ve flown in for business a half dozen times, driven from FL to AZ in 2018, but this is our first real visit to Texas in 10 years and we can’t wait to see old friends and new! Not considered a Boondocking state, though it appears every city or county in West Texas has a park with free camping. Some have free hookups! 🤣 Did groceries today at H-E-B, Big Spring TX. Given all the inflation of the last 3 years, prices considerably less than anywhere in Arizona, or likely most states. Last night we stayed at Yoakum County Park and tonight we are at Foster Creek Park, west of San Angelo. It’s not Yellowstone or Zion, but we have more fun at small quiet places I’m sure you know what I mean. Thanks for reading. Tomorrow we’ll be one of the early birds arriving at Inks Lake SP for the Rally! Come by campsite #71 to say hello if you are attending!

Thanks for this Steve! Our Hull 113 built 9 years ago, having lived a lot of outdoors in the SW sun, is pretty dull. Some shine on the curbside, which is nice since it is the side where live when we camp. Ours will be the flat one at the Texas Rally! For CGI’s service, their website states price “Starting at $3,000” and thinking they’d want more given the condition of our hull. Also, they suggest re-servicing on a regular basis. They’re also too far away for us. Though I’d be worried about paint chipping on the front and paint can turn into a nightmare if removal is needed. BTW, the colors above are not the best of choices, can I say awful? IMHO. I do like the Casita two-tone, if it was an exact match to the two-tone white-gray of our truck. Thanks @MAX Burner!

And the origin of Smokey the Bear started on Capitan Mountain, Lincoln County, just north of Riudoso. Also the stomping grounds of Billy the Kid. https://smokeybear.com/en/smokeys-history/story-of-smokey

We spent 3 days and nights in Wonderful Ruidoso NM! They had bad fires and floods early summer and the village is still working cleanup efforts. Still an amazing beautiful place, wildlife walking around feeding on grass in town. Ruidoso is one of the true gems of New Mexico! We wrote earlier re the “White Mountains.” The area surrounding Ruidoso also uses this name: https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/lincoln/recarea/?recid=78583 Last March we met a fun couple at a public Pickleball court while camping at Casa Grande AZ. They invited us and we took them up on this visit. Great hosts showed us around town, made us dinner, bought us dinner out (we tried to pay)! New BFFs and we played PBall all 3 days with a great group of locals and Texans that frequent this resort town. We stayed Midtown Mountain RV Park right in the village. We are often Boondocking and there’s good campsites everywhere but for 3 days wanted to be close to everything! https://midtownmountaincampground.com/ They had some sort of LED lighting system that made all the light speckles in the photo. Nice quiet place for being in town, good bathrooms, friendly owner. Elk and wild/feral horses in town, bear a mountain lions in the surrounding hills! We will come back often! IMG_3822.mov

Yes you can, but it will not charge correctly and fully unless it has a LiFePO4 setting. Yes, for now do it, being careful to connect positive to +tive cables, negative to… The other concern is how many amps is your charger rated. Many are only 10A. To fully charge 640 AH Lithionics that are at 50% SOC with a 10A charger will take 32 hours. Leave it connected overnight. An OK short-term fix until you get your Xantrex 3000 working!

Think it was February of about the same year. By myself in ONLY a ‘76 Malibu, left Chicago late morning and got to a friend's house in Portland the next afternoon. Just looked it up on my phone map and that was over 2100 miles non-stop. Oh, the adrenaline of youth! About 10 years ago, drove my truck 1100 miles, Prescott to Austin nonstop. That was the last time for me! We left Prescott a full week ago and so far we’ve just entered west Texas, left Ruidoso this morning and spending tonight, free camping at Yoakum County Park. Our longest day driving on this trip will be 4.5 hours, average 3 hours a day. The beauty of a relaxing Oliver trip!

just noticed this wording in the other thread cited here, "the router is built into the dish." Are all the Starlink Minis built this way? When I installed our Pepwave system, January of this year, they were asking $2,500 for Starlink HW and to my knowledge no mini was available. I want to add Starlink soon, but I do not want another router. The Pepwave has a WAN RJ45 input port, and it has the smarts to choose between the WAN source and cellular. I also want to install ours on our tow vehicle like I did the cellular antenna. Maybe I need another Starlink product vs. the Mini?

After our Oliver has been parked for a long, hotter than average, summer, we are finally on a trip. Of course there has been a lot of worry re this subject. I noticed while driving a simple way to know whether your leaf springs are OK. Check your rear view mirror and note the horizontal line of the tailgate is parallel to the line on the Oliver where the hulls are attached. When a leaf breaks you will see one side lower, an angle instead of parallel lines! If a street side leaf had broken, you could not easily tell from the entry steps.

Perhaps start your own post, to get more Oliver member feedback! To me Yavapai County to Coconino County to the north are the best of Arizona, and our family has ridden 100s of roads and dirt trails up here. We found this part of the world in the early 90s and bought our home in 2005. (Yeah, the White Mountains, central eastern AZ may even be better for camping!) The saguaro cactus is the iconic cactus of the Sonoran Desert. That would be the total 1/3 of SW AZ. Every time we leave the Phoenix Valley to drive home to Prescott, at 2-3K elevation, we drive past thousands! They flourish at this elevation! Picture is near Black Canyon City, an hour north of Phoenix off I-17 at near 3,000 FT elevation. Start by looking here, Tucson parks have 1000s of them: https://www.nps.gov/sagu/planyourvisit/maps.htm From what I’ve read @Mike and Carol has a lot of experience from Tucson to Bisbee and on this forum there is a wealth of postings on camping trips in the SW. South of Tucson to Nogales, and literally 200 miles east or west along the border, has not been safe over last 3 years. DON’T go there until .gov fixes this, be safe. Quartzite to Yuma and the AZ/CA border there is all good.