The Ugly Duckling – the Restoration of our 2016 Oliver Hull #113

[jd1923]

"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 7^th 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 4^th owners. She looked good when we first got her and everything was in working order.

[jd1923]

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!

 

[jd1923]

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 that OTT applied at the factory and prior owners who somehow believe caulking over caulk is a good idea, NOT! What mess as you can see in our pictures! This extra work is 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!

[jd1923]

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.

[jd1923]

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!

[ScottyGS]

John,  Thanks for posting this!   Our trailer (#145) came off the line in June of 2016.  Oliver at that time was making about 2 per week so I am thinking the delivery date on #113 was sometime in February of that year.   I've been proud to own her for ten years now and lucky to be able to store indoors for most of that.  

I have the satellite dish installed and appreciate the pictures of it's removal.   I think it would be awesome to pull the guts out of it and put a Starlink Mini in there but that kind of work is way above my pay grade.    

What did you replace yours with?  Looks like a smaller more angular version of the dish cover.   I am sure it attracts less bugs that the original. 

I've had conversations with Oliver management about answering price objections with a "cost of ownership" vs. purchase price strategy.  Your work on this trailer is a poster child for that.  Ten year old trailer that, at least in my opinion, is better than new.   When people talk about their automatic awnings and other new stuff, I like to bring up mirrored cabinet doors and Lonseal flooring.  

Thanks again for all the pics and sharing your work.   Hope our paths cross in the future. 

Scotty

[Tom and Doreen]

John, what an absolutely amazing job! It 'looks like' an Oliver but it's so much more now than that you've made improvements to all aspect of the trailer. I don't know if you follow the YouTube channel  Dave's Auto Center but you could be the "Dave" of the Oliver world!  

[routlaw]

Nice job! Great work!