OBI Dweller Review and Discussion

[tjtx]

Hey all. I'm looking at buying an OBi Dweller 13 in the next few weeks and happened on this thread. Thought I'd share some interesting info here:

CS26, CS26 direct from Rongcheng RV Homeland Technology Co., Ltd. in CN

CS26 from Rongcheng RV Homeland Technology Co., Ltd.. Search High Quality CS26 Manufacturing and Exporting supplier on Alibaba.com.

rvhomeland.m.en.alibaba.com

OBi is using these guys, Rongcheng Molin Outdoor Technology, as the ODM for these trailers. They seem to be a pretty decent company and they make a lot for Purple Line as well as AusRV.

My wife and I have been going back and forth trying to figure if we'd rather buy an Intech and stick to RV sites or get the OBi and be able to go more places. We're planning on towing it with our '23 Tacoma TRD OR, which this is kinda pushing the capacity of it, but glad to see others have been successful with a similar truck. Luckily we're not in the mountains for the most part.

This thread has been great so far, thanks for all of the great info and thought I'd at least share what I've found in researching as well.

 

[AMMO461]

2021 Tacoma TRD OR DCSB.
We installed a Hayden 679 tranny cooler for added security and piece of mind.

 

[CORVDealers]

Hey all. I'm looking at buying an OBi Dweller 13 in the next few weeks and happened on this thread. Thought I'd share some interesting info here:

CS26, CS26 direct from Rongcheng RV Homeland Technology Co., Ltd. in CN

CS26 from Rongcheng RV Homeland Technology Co., Ltd.. Search High Quality CS26 Manufacturing and Exporting supplier on Alibaba.com.

rvhomeland.m.en.alibaba.com

OBi is using these guys, Rongcheng Molin Outdoor Technology, as the ODM for these trailers. They seem to be a pretty decent company and they make a lot for Purple Line as well as AusRV.

My wife and I have been going back and forth trying to figure if we'd rather buy an Intech and stick to RV sites or get the OBi and be able to go more places. We're planning on towing it with our '23 Tacoma TRD OR, which this is kinda pushing the capacity of it, but glad to see others have been successful with a similar truck. Luckily we're not in the mountains for the most part.

This thread has been great so far, thanks for all of the great info and thought I'd at least share what I've found in researching as well.

I'm not sure if they are related, but the company that imports the OBIs and the Conquerors is Rongcheng Compaks New Energy Automotive. You can see their shipments here https://www.importgenius.com/importers/obi-conqueror-corp

 

[rblitz]

Hey all. I'm looking at buying an OBi Dweller 13 in the next few weeks and happened on this thread. Thought I'd share some interesting info here:

CS26, CS26 direct from Rongcheng RV Homeland Technology Co., Ltd. in CN

CS26 from Rongcheng RV Homeland Technology Co., Ltd.. Search High Quality CS26 Manufacturing and Exporting supplier on Alibaba.com.

rvhomeland.m.en.alibaba.com

OBi is using these guys, Rongcheng Molin Outdoor Technology, as the ODM for these trailers. They seem to be a pretty decent company and they make a lot for Purple Line as well as AusRV.

My wife and I have been going back and forth trying to figure if we'd rather buy an Intech and stick to RV sites or get the OBi and be able to go more places. We're planning on towing it with our '23 Tacoma TRD OR, which this is kinda pushing the capacity of it, but glad to see others have been successful with a similar truck. Luckily we're not in the mountains for the most part.

This thread has been great so far, thanks for all of the great info and thought I'd at least share what I've found in researching as well.

My wife and I were about one month away from buying a Cougar 1/2 ton and we started researching RV quality and got really "depressed". Then a light bulb went off: given the growth in RVing, we were competing with a huge number of "campers" for scarce spaces. We love tent camping but getting older makes that a challenge. The combined idea of avoiding the high demand for RV spaces and our love of being out in the wilderness made a pivot to the "off-grid" market a no-brainer. We started by looking at Opus, but didn't like the cargo/sleeping config. The Dweller 15 was the closest to our needs.

 

[rblitz]

Gray water management is something which could be improved on the Dweller 13. I’m not sure what is customary in other geographies, but I am finding more and more areas in the US where regulations ban the dumping of gray water onto the ground. I have specifically run into this in Texas state parks and US national parks.

The D13 has a nice sized 21 gallon gray water tank. My issue with it is that there is no means for connecting a dump hose. There is a large PVC drain pipe which has a ball valve and which terminates with a PVC elbow. I brought this up with my dealer prior to purchase and was basically told - that’s the way it is.

My original plan was to install some type of hose connection onto that PVC elbow so that I could attach a drain line for times when I wanted/needed to dispose of the gray water at a dump station. Executing the plan proved to be a bit more difficult. Like all of the other plumbing in the Dweller, the gray water waste pipe is metric sized. It is plumbed in 40mm PVC.

Luckily, it is pretty to solve. The outlet from the gray water tank uses a rubber union joint to connect to the 40mm PVC. It was pretty simple to remove the factory drain pipe assembly and replace it with 1-1/4 inch PVC which has an OD of 42mm. The 1-1/4 inch PVC pipe easily slipped into the rubber union.

Apologies for the poor picture, but this shows what my gray water drain plumbing now looks like.

• 1-1/4 inch PVC pipe attached to existing 40mm rubber union fitting
• 1-1/4 inch PVC ball valve - I will probably replace this with a "true union" ball valve in the future.
• More 1-1/4 inch PVC pipe
• 1-1/4 inch PVC elbow (socket by thread)
• 1-1/4 inch to 1-1/2 inch adapter (male x male)
• My drain hose is currently a 1-1/2 inch swimming pool vacuum hose to which I added threaded “fire hose” fittings. I tried a flat discharge hose that would roll up very small, but it was an absolute failure...it would easily kink and would not drain well under gravity flow.

To Do:

• I still need to figure out an elbow fitting for easily attaching the hose at an RV dump station. Suggestions welcome.
• For version 2 I might use 1-1/4 inch swimming pool vacuum hose with camlock fittings. I think the camlock fittings would make it easier to attach the drain hose and the bill of materials would be simpler. 1-1/4 inch hose should still drain the tank at a reasonable rate.

I went the camlock route for the grey water.
1.25" camlock connects to a 1.25" to 40mm adapter. I took off the downward facing elbow and used a new elbow facing towards the trailer's driver side then used the extra 40mm pipe to extend to right under the side frame. I'm not really too concerned with bottoming out here as my wife and I don't do overlanding, just forest roads. Besides, the Dwellers steps are even lower than this is. I may reinforce this so it doesn't loosen over time though. The whole thing cost me about $40 USD, not including the hose.

 

[tjtx]

My wife and I were about one month away from buying a Cougar 1/2 ton and we started researching RV quality and got really "depressed". Then a light bulb went off: given the growth in RVing, we were competing with a huge number of "campers" for scarce spaces.

This sounds pretty much exactly like what we just went through. We can still tent camp, and plan to, but having something like this gives us a nice "FOB" to camp more primitively from if we choose to. We're finishing up the purchase of our Dweller 13 today, and should probably be picking it up next week.

 

[tjtx]

I'm not sure if they are related, but the company that imports the OBIs and the Conquerors is Rongcheng Compaks New Energy Automotive. You can see their shipments here https://www.importgenius.com/importers/obi-conqueror-corp

Yeah, pretty sure they're the same company. I found Rongcheng via looking around on importgenius/importyeti to see how these were being brought over, and dug from there.

 

[rblitz]

This sounds pretty much exactly like what we just went through. We can still tent camp, and plan to, but having something like this gives us a nice "FOB" to camp more primitively from if we choose to. We're finishing up the purchase of our Dweller 13 today, and should probably be picking it up next week.

Exciting!

We got ours in November and haven't even had a chance to christen it. First trip is a state forest in April then a roadtrip from the Mid-Atlantic to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Will post any "discoveries" from those trips.