A Few Teething Pains

Fargoman · October 13, 2021

We took delivery of our LE2 Twin Bed model, hull number 894, on September 16th. We stayed at the Oliver site the first night, then on to David Crockett SP for one night, then three nights at Fall Creek Falls SP, TN. After torrential rains enroute to Fall Creek Falls SP, followed by three days of nearly constant rain (got to know the inside of the trailer really well), we bailed on our plans to continue eastward to Great Smokey Mountains National Park, where three more days of rain was forecast. We decided to head back to the Oliver mothership to have a couple of issues dealt with before wending our way westward to Northern California.

Our screen door latch failed, a first according to Jason. I removed the catch so we could open the door without fear of being locked in or out. The latch was replaced and has since been behaving.

One of the Andersen WDH frame clamps moved, allowing the attached chain to become slack. The problem was traced to a cross-threaded set screw, which gave the impression of being tightened enough, but it was protruding from the frame clamp much more than the set screw on the other frame clamp, which should have been a clue to the installer. The frame clamp was replaced with no issues since.

Within a week of delivery, I noticed that the caulking around the rear streetside window had yellowed, while the caulking on all other windows was still pristine white. I assume that during production someone ran out of caulk and grabbed the wrong kind. While only being a cosmetic issue, it still bugged me, and I will re-caulk that window when all others need to be caulked.

We have the Suburban water heater. Ten days after delivery, while opening the water heater door to turn the heater to electric mode, one of the sheet metal screws holding the door hinge fell out, apparently having been stripped during assembly at the factory or installation at Oliver. The missing screw allowed the forward part of the heater door to open almost half an inch. I felt fortunate that a gust of wind didn't rip the door off completely while underway. I used some white duct tape along the bottom edge of the heater door to act as a hinge, which held for the rest of the trip home. The apparent fix is to replace the missing screw with a larger one.

Unrelated to an Oliver issue, I brought a TireTraker TT-600 TPMS system with us so we could have an easily installed TPMS system for the long drive home from Hohenwald. While marinating in the rain on our third day at Fall Creek Falls SP, I noticed that one of the trailer tires had gone from 55 PSI to 36 PSI overnight, with no obvious source of a leak. Rather than changing the tire in the heavy rain, I just inflated it to 70 PSI and checked it periodically the next day on the way back to Hohenwald. The tire held pressure, but I asked Jason to have the tire removed and check for the source of the leak. It turned out to be the TPMS sensor, and not an object in the tire. I replaced the leaking sensor with a spare (I bought 6 sensors), but it leaked audibly, no soap spray needed to find it. Next, I removed the sensor from the spare tire to put on the rolling wheel, and all was good. I will contact TireTraker to resolve the leaking sensor problem.

Our Ollie got it's first bath today. While washing the roof on the streetside, I discovered that there were three loose stainless fender washers laying by the middle awning mounting bracket. Also, a few feet away there was a quarter inch chip in the roof gelcoat. Kind of disappointed in the quality control. I need to contact Oliver to find out how to fix the gelcoat chip.

Other than those relatively minor issues, the Ollie is very comfortable and tows easily behind our RAM 1500 EcoDiesel, with no sway when passing or being passed by big rigs.