jd1923

As with most things, I'm sure this is true. However, I believe in the acronym "Anything But China" (ABC) whenever possible. Often, China is the only choice. Current management is changing that now, if you know what I mean! 😎 For 30 years, I've purchased a lot of tires from Tire Rack. I can understand the draw to Discount Tire because they are everywhere you may need them on the road, but I find them over-priced and difficult customer service. Tire Rack includes a 2-year Road Hazard and include installation in your purchase and choose a local shop, ship them there and get a contracted installation rate. The other thing I like about Tire Rack is they are the only company that lists "Country of Origin" at the bottom of the Specs tab for every tire they sell. @John Dorrer if your friend with the new Oliver is still in the market for tires, I strongly suggest these at this price! (EDIT: these do not come in 15" so will only work for older Olivers with 16" wheels.) Michelin Agilis CrossClimate LT225/75R16 These had MSRP of $260 each but are discontinued for the new version, on closeout for $189. I have these tires on our Oliver because it came that way. These are great tires for the Oliver, designed as a high mileage commercial van tire. I've towed our trailer about 300 miles on rocky Arizona dirt roads. The rocks on our roads are sharp. I know this because once I got a 4" cut into a rear dirt bike tire. We have about 18K miles in the last 2 years, and I have no idea how many miles prior owner(s) towed and the tread and sidewalls look like new with DOT codes 2420 (6 years old). They are Michelin, and according to Tire Rack, Made in the USA! Anybody need new Oliver tires?

Maybe the fronts being the leading tire take more abuse, first to hit bumps and bridge seams and potholes, etc. I've not noticed this before, though most of my experience is in auto applications that only have front-end wheel bearings. Given your hub temps traveling were good, I would not worry too much. Do your best to reassemble correctly. I don't use torque wrenches, but what you wrote looks good. I tighten and spin (and repeat) and try to place the cotter pin at or near the tightest point while hand-tightening with a medium length ratchet. Clean the bearings thoroughly. I rinse with old gasoline and then wash with Dawn detergent, using compressed air to blow clean and dry. Repack again using your packing tool and fill both inner and outer seams of each bearing with grease removing any air bubbles. I believe it's very important to fill grease between the new inner seal and inner bearing. Same for the outer bearing and the washer and I grease on and around the races. This way grease should not spin out of the bearings with use. Your grease looks a little odd, but it could just be the picture. The many brands of high-temp CV2 wheel bearing grease I've used always looks a very dark red or maroon in color and in your picture, it looks more orange. I did the same Timken replacement, but a year later upgraded to D52 axles and never did the follow-up repacking you are working. Wonder what the bearings look like on my old axles? (Still trying to sell them!)

Welcome @Douglas-Stickler to The OTT Forum and we wish for you a new Oliver in your future! This is correct and what @Steve Morris with his favorite Land Cruiser wrote "with the 5.7 V8, and it is just adequate" is also correct. The 200 platform, an LX or the Tundra would work, but sorry not the GX. We have a wonderful '08 GX470. Three years ago, after purchase of our Oliver, I setup our GX with a REDARC brake controller thinking I could use it as our tow vehicle. When I got home after a test tow, first thing I said to my wife is "We need to buy a truck." She nodded in agreement. Besides payload capacity or 4.6 vs. 5.7 towing power, there is another major issue. The wheelbase on the GX/4Runner 120 platform is just too short! Any porpoising movement in Oliver creates a BAD pendulum effect on the short wheelbase of the GX. The Andersen WDH helps a little, but using it strains the suspension front to rear. It feels awkward and uncomfortable. After driving just a few miles on an in-town highway, I returned home and detached. There is no way in the world I would tow down the mountain where we live in our GX pulling an Oliver. Chris drives our GX every day. After I restored it, she lets me drive it on occasion. 🤣 Hope you can keep your GX and purchase a 2500 series truck like we did!

I concur! @Ollie-Haus showed me this product last year and we bought two, one for home and one for the Oliver. We use the one at home every day and the other on every trip. They are usually $130, so this New price is very good. I purchased both of ours Amazon Used Like New for $80 each on Amazon. They both came in new condition.

Good example Ron! Most of us want more capacity but I wasn't even trying to upsell. My point was to spend the same dollar for the same low Ah capacity but choose modern lithium technology because it makes good sense to do so! Lose 200 LBS weight, take half the space, get twice the life in charge cycles, 3 times the warranty. And btw, LA batteries are somewhat dangerous, towing with sulfuric acid! But I'm with you, Ron! We cool our Oliver while towing, so the cabin is cool during fuel and lunch stops, no hook-ups there. I'm also not trying to convince anybody to change their camping style, but for us, we don't use public bathrooms anymore, because we have all the comforts of home in our Oliver. We travel batteries and fresh tanks full. With 900 Ah in battery capacity, we can run our A/C for 3-5 days weather depending, and with and an extra 35-gal fresh water in the TV we can last over a week including water for showers. But that's us, not trying to sell. Even if you spend every night at a campground with hookups, what if you run into weather or a roadside breakdown? Having extra water and battery capacity sure would help. And my friend @johnwen had his LA batteries fail when he unknowingly ran out of LP and the fridge had switched to DC. If he had made his 600 Ah Lithium upgrade prior to this issue, their fridge would have run another 3-4 days on battery keeping the food cold. I tried, but the OP is determined. What would you choose?

Yep, you wrote "6V batteries" and most still have the fill caps! AGM is "maintenance free" yet glorified LA. You know in the early 50s and before, every American automobile used a 6V battery. 🤣 I guess you missed my point, but I'll give it one more try... In 2019, I upgraded a Class C with solar, inverter and three 100 Ah AGM batteries. AGM (LA) was the right choice then. I paid about $800 for 300 Ah (150 usable). The alternative was two 100 Ah Battleborn batteries which many Oliver Owners in the day purchased. This would have been about $2,400 which came to 3x the cost. This is not true anymore. You can buy cheaper LiFePO4 brands, but two of these Epoch 105s come to $1000, Four quality AGM batteries will cost about the same. LiFePO4 is warrantied for 11 years while the Gold model on any LA battery is warrantied for 3 years. Epoch Batteries 12V 105Ah Essential Series LiFePO4 Battery — Renewable Outdoors Two of these have very close to the same usable Ahs as 4 LA. These weigh 22 LBS each so you could also lose 200 LBS in the battery bay and have enough room besides for a good size toolbox! 😎 You'll have trouble finding another Oliver owner who would be the defense of a future purchase of lead-acid house batteries. But it's certainly OK if you want to be the one. Just trying to help. 😎

Sorry for being so negative. We truly love our Oliver. China tires on an Oliver really got me.

I watched the OTT video on the 2027 model. It turned my stomach in disappointment. Can't stand the BLACK framed windows that look like eyesores to the interior. But worse than that... What educated buyer cares about fancy options when the basics are substandard? OTT is making design changes in their Hohenwald bubble when all they need to do is read a few threads on the forum they provide! It is a lot of reading, but OTT Management please start by reading the 37-page thread "Made in USA Leaf Springs." Dexter 1750 LB springs have been failing forever and they still mount them? Ten years ago, they mounted Michelin LT Agilis tires on 16" HD rims, now you get ST tires on 15" rims, and more recently some China Cr@p tires? 🤣 They should lose OPTIFUSE breakers and source something with quality. Lose Xantrex over the much-preferred Victron products. I'll give them one good choice in dropping Truma! All Jason talked about was the solar awning, made by another manufacturer, just bolted on by OTT. He said it works better in the morning, facing the sun, but then I'd have to get my tired butt up and out to erect it. You'd also have to think about sun direction when parking in addition to leveling! What if the level spot has no sun exposure in that direction? We've only used our awning 5-6 times in 3 years. They could put 600W solar on the roof with a directional mechanism. Now that would be useful! Why after 10+ years are they still mounting switches, fuses, breakers and water valves under the beds. I fixed all that after the fact, but it would be better if they would do the right things from the start! 😎 Why are there over 40K posts in the Mechanical & Technical Tips and Ollie Modifications forums alone? Better design would lead to less need for maintenance and modification of our hulls.

This was sensible on a cost basis 5 years ago and before. LiFePO4 batteries used to be expensive. Today you get far more usable Ah/$ going with LiFePO4 batteries over 4 "golf cart batteries!" Watering batteries doesn't have to be a thing anymore, OMG! 🤣 But what do I know? I really dislike connecting to shore power. With our recent upgrades, we travel for weeks without the need to plug in! Our DC-DC charger alone allows us to produce more Ahs in 5 hours towing than you have in your entire system after being plugged in all night, and that's if your batteries were brand new. Really, take a good look at LiFePO4 today! You'll save money outright on an Ah/$ basis. When you figure 10-year vs. 5-year life, the savings truly double! Lead acid only belongs in the tow vehicle as a starter battery, not anymore for deep-cycle storage.

Wow! Really? Can this be true? Six years ago, I purchased an old 12’ flatbed trailer to haul our dirt bikes and SxS. Dexter tandem axle 7K, same suspension as OEM Oliver. I planned to restore it, new wiring, lights, paint frame, new flooring, add brakes to the rear axle, etc. OMG, It had China tires! I quickly purchased a set of the US made Goodyear Endurance ST tires. Listed the old tires on Craig’s. Sold the set for $100 because I didn’t want to take any more money from anybody. I explained twice to the new owner, these are not safe for highway use! He was OK in using them for a landscape trailer. John, please explain to your friend he needs to buy new tires! Anybody taking possession of a new Oliver, let OTT know you’ll not accept delivery with those cheap tires! 🙃 Glad most of us have 16” rims with LT tires mounted!

Not replace, but repair the connection so it cannot come off again. Is it for the inverter/charger? So a 110V plug like the fridge? If so, it’s not the plug but a cheap outlet receptacle. That could be replaced with a Leviton or a quality outlet not Made in you know where! Cheesy, yes! OTT wired the outputs on our inverter using a residential junction box and wire nuts! 🤣 Hardwire? I’d do that in a heartbeat! 😎

I'd say, this is not such a good idea. Go back to your post from last year and review Geoff's suggestion @Snackchaser. Time to fix the issue vs. adding a checklist item. Not sure re the Norcold fridge controls, but on our Dometic when in LP mode it will stay there by design. When you select "Auto" it will switch to AC if available, or DC when not plugged in.

Good work Bill, and you made GJ's day! I have this as part of our "2016 Elite II Owners Manual" PDF, but every time a fellow forum member posts an electronic PDF file, a manual or schematic, that relates to our hull, I download it and save electronic copy. I prefer using PDF files. Not just for the absence of carrying the big basket of paper, but for ease and speed of search. When GJ wrote his model # in the title of this post, I search my 557-page PDF copy of the Oliver manual for keyword "2454" and in 2 seconds it jumped to page 151 where the Dometic fridge manual starts in this long file. I use the Ctrl-F hotkeys, type a keyword, and there it is. No time taken to review the Table of Contents, search an index in the back pages or thumb through paper. This search capability and other tools we have today are so useful! I show my Project Management Professional (PMP) students this, in every class I teach, as they must navigate through multiple PMI standards, 1000s of pages of content they could see on their PMP Exam. I use the Ctrl-F search function several times a day for anything I'm looking for, searching the content of web pages, doing Oliver research and searching the shop manuals for the many cars, trucks, bikes and appliances we own. It's so handy! 😎 You sure have your files well-organized though, and most people still prefer paper copy. The young professionals in my classes are strongly against printing long files for sustainability concerns, like the 290-page slide deck we use, at 2 slides per page, OMG it's a lot! 🤣

@Geronimo John and of course, you have the tank diverter valve pointing at the full tank. When these crossover valves switch from the empty side to the full side its secondary pressure is lower.

I believe we have the same model Dometic fridge. Ours has worked fine several times camping in CO outside of Telluride and on the White Mountains in AZ, both above 9K ft. Also, it reads like GJ is still in Denver just over 5K ft. GJ, you're getting the 3 clicks, so all electrical controls are fine. You certainly have a gas issue. I have no experience there but believe your "analysis and investigate" lists are right on. Best wishes, JD

I believe you hit on it here! New issue often comes from last service. I can't believe you were there and OTT Service would not fix an issue they likely created in your scheduled service one business day before! They tried a "new monitor panel." Did they first check the fuse? You have a hull a little older than ours but maybe this circuit is wired the same. Our DC panel has a fuse titled "Water Heater Tank Monitor" (see pic DC fuse #7). Perhaps we're getting closer now! 😎 This 15A fuse might be blown. If so, your HWH would not have 12V to fire up on LP. If you have hot water, I'll bet they pick up 12V from the HWH wiring and if so, there would be an inline fuse between there and the SeeLevel system. It's really bad electrical practice to wire inline fuses at random locations in the basement! RV manufacturers do this often and when I find fuses around the Oliver basement, I move them to a new +bus I wired under the rear dinette seat, so I know where they are, have easy access and never have to reach down under again! Look around for an inline fuse, starting at the HWH then going towards the tank readers or the SeeLevel panel. Hope you find it quickly!

Wow, that's a 100A breaker! It must power the entire 12VDC panel and your jacks. You have to think, how did it blow? Unless a major appliance fried or you did something notable, like arc a heavy gauge hot wire to ground, something you'd remember, the 100A OPTIFUSE just tripped for no reason. There have been several defective OPTIFUSE breakers noted on our forum. I also read OTT has stopped using them. I suggest you replace this breaker with a 100A ANL fuse. 😎

Just 4 days after our Oliver was delivered, I joined our great OTT Forum. My two favorite sections are "Where's Ollie" and "Ollie Modifications" where I frequent often! Early on, Bill @topgun2 referred to our hulls as "cousins" (our #113 and his #117). There are a lot of us with 2016 and older Olivers. These 10+ year-old Olivers have had nothing but special care through the years. I hear Scotty is just starting a renewal project of his own! You wrote "cost of ownership" vs. purchase price." As written above, I had budgeted 15,000 for upgrades (plus 1000 +/- hours in sweat equity) in addition to a very good used price for the hull. My detailed spreadsheet has documented a total of $16,120, so I'm a little over budget. This includes new D52 axles with Alcan Springs, 5 Victron devices, 900 Ah Epoch Essentials, new Chill Cube A/C and so many other documented upgrades. It includes an Emeril Air Fryer, new luxury bedding, new custom upholstered dinette seat cushions, additional shelving, multiple exhaust fans, etc. It includes every bracket, roll of tape, every nut and bolt I used in the last 3 years. I figure our cost of ownership, everything included, is 70% of the cost of a fully optioned new Oliver. Wouldn't trade her for a new Oliver, no way! I've made better choices in our upgrades, and I do better work than the contract installers OTT hires. Then there's the little things like this for example: Yeah, couldn't wait to ditch the dish! That thing was HUGE! I put a Winegard RZ-7500 TV antenna in its place (using 3M VHB tape, NO screw holes). It still appears to be large, but it's actually less than half the size of the Dish! As far as Starlink, I have that and our Pepwave cellular router built into the tow vehicle instead, so it's always with us while camping and on day trips. Picture shows the front roof completed, but before the detailing work. I hate caulking and I'm not good at it. I made a mess with Dicor caulk, not using that product again! But it looks great from the ground! 🤣 And no more useless Wi-Fi Ranger and cameras up top. Yes, the older hulls have some bonuses, some you mentioned, and the little things like separate switches for Entry and Side Porch lights (ours now have lights fore and aft too). Oliver Hull #113 is a family member. Our son Adam got to know her, camping the month of April around the Prescott NF. She will always be with us. 😎

I had removed the Dometic Penguin A/C prior to this work. I temporarily filled the 14x14” opening with a piece of plywood to keep dust out while allowing Cameron the room above to make the entire rear roof shine! It’s always a mess under an old A/C. Good thing we did because the new Chill Cube is a foot shorter to the rear. With my son’s help, we installed the new Furrion Chill Cube A/C. One last task was to restore the rear bumper area. I removed the mounts for the bicycle rack we don’t use, drilled out more rivets and removed the deck plate and folding bumper. I cleaned the inside waste hose area, and steel brushed, sanded and ceramic coated all parts. I've been wanting to write this up for a few months now. Chris is out of town on her annual "Sisters Trip." Adam's been working overtime and it's boring being home alone. That’s it – she’s all done! 😎 When it's time for some love again, I'll drop her off with Cameron for a renewal! No more Ugly Duckling, but quite the Beautiful Swan she is now!

An autobody professional I’ve used before suggested a local guy who runs a detailing shop at the far end of Chino Valley, the town north of Prescott. Cameron came by our home, looked over the Oliver carefully, at every angle. He explained what he would do and gave me a reasonable quote. We picked a start date and shook hands. He asked for 2 weeks, so he could work on our Oliver along with other scheduled work. When 2 weeks had come, he asked another two days to “to really get her right!” She was a thing of beauty, in that every square inch of the hull was shining so brightly! We have never seen our hull in this amazing condition. While Cameron was working on the shine, I was working on restoring or replacing all the trim parts. I painted the fridge vents, the furnace and HWH covers a medium gray to match the Oliver graphics and the gray on our truck.

I wanted the final outcome to far surpass the large investment in stripping, cleaning, buffing and ceramic coating. This meant a whole lot of extra work. I’m not the guy who hires the guy, drop it off and they will handle everything. Shops only do what they’re paid to do. I wanted to do everything I could do to make the final result far better. My first step was to remove all the awful silicone caulk. What mess as you can see in the first picture. Then I went around the entire hull leaving piles of old caulk along the driveway. This extra work was truly worth the effort. I also removed every trim part, outlet covers, awning mounts, the covers to the furnace and HWH, the handles, latches and hatch on the doghouse, the door hook (no longer needed with Lippert friction hinges), the cameras fore and aft I’ve never used and all the old-tech like the WiFi Ranger and the monster rooftop satellite dish! This way, my detailer had a wide-open canvas to focus on stripping, cleaning, buffing, polishing and ceramic coating without a lot of stuff being in the way!

It didn’t take long, parked outdoors in the Arizona sun, to become a dull pasty white! She started with four 6V lead acid batteries, an old 2KW Xantrex inverter only with PD converter in the power panel. She had wires all over the battery bay and everywhere else for that matter, fuses and breakers under beds, manual water valves and the mess it was born with spread out into every corner of the basement. And it had old-tech accessories; the cameras fore and aft, a WiFi Ranger, Dish satellite and that awful Dometic P2! All that has been corrected and improved with a lot of Marine-Tex used to fill nearly 100 holes! And what a silicone mess that OTT started at the factory and some owners believe caulk on top of old caulk is proper maintenance! In the two years from 2024 to 2025 I rebuilt almost every electrical, mechanical and plumbing system in our 10-year-old Oliver Travel Trailer. It’s been a lot of work, but our Oliver is worth it! I plan to enter another post to chronical all my repair and modification work but here we’ll focus on its cosmetic restoration. The finale was to dress up our Ugly Duckling. Not merely gelcoat buffing and ceramic coating, but a complete exterior body restoration!

"The Ugly Duckling is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a duckling who is rejected by his siblings due to his unusual appearance. After enduring hardship and loneliness, he matures into a beautiful swan, illustrating the theme that true beauty comes from within and that one should not be judged by outward appearances.” We were fortunate to find our Oliver three years ago for sale right in our neighborhood! And at the time, we had no idea what an Oliver is and what makes it special! It didn’t take long though, since just 5 days after we first viewed our Oliver was paid in full, so the prior owner delivered it to our home on June 7th 2023. This day is also Chris’ birthday and what a special surprise it was. Chris loves every time we get away in our Oliver, and me too! I generally buy used vehicles in good condition, letting the original owner absorb the new-price depreciation. I enjoy fixin’ them up, making them as good as new and better, making them mine! From the start, I had planned on making repairs, mods and upgrades with a budget an additional $15,000, just for parts. With good patience, ample time and craftsmanship she could become something special! Hull #113 was well cared for; prior owners kept her clean and often kept her covered. She returned to the factory in 2018 and 2021 for maintenance and other services; new white blinds, new Atwood furnace and much more. Also in 2021, she moved from Florida to Las Vegas and was ceramic coated at the time. Always from the South and SW has kept corrosion at bay. Good records were kept and we are now the 4th owners. She looked good when we first got her and everything was in working order.

Don't get too comfortable! 🤣 I see two things that are wrong... First the wire harness should not be fed through the wheel. When you do get your spare tight the tire will be jamming the wire harness against the hull making the spare sit on a tilt. The wire harness should sit outside of the tire but make sure you push it inside the fiberglass cover in the end. Secondly, your lock nut is keeping the large circular "wingnut" from tightening your tire against the hull, hence the wobble. I just checked and mine does not have a locknut. If I had one, it would certainly be in the way of tightening down the spare. The nut is greater than 1/2" tall and there is about 3/8" of space on ours. It's likely one of those things where OTT did not stick to a standard hull to hull. I believe @rideandfly's spare is new, not original so perhaps his fits. IT does really depend on the tire width. I also have a large concave washer not seen in anybody else's picture. This supports the fiberglass on the spare cover when tightening the outer locknut. In my picture, the fiberglass cover fits in where I created a space on the threaded shaft, all hardware is mounted in the order shown. @Dirt Duff, I suggest you remove your locknut, feed the wire harness correctly, crank 'er down and you should be fine! 😎

These Optifuse breakers are known to fail. There are a few posts here about that. I do not know what the common failed position is, but could be open when it looks closed. I would test for continuity between the two posts on the breaker. Be careful though, these are HOT, or at least the battery side is if the breaker is defective (open when appears to be closed). Hope you get your DC power up soon but put it on your mod list to replace this breaker with a 60A ANL fuse and holder. I do not believe anybody has found a quality 60A breaker. They're all cheap junk made in you know where. Fuses are dependable. Always have an extra fuse.