Help? Towing - ball weights and reduce gvm?

[Melandmatt86]

Yeah I know, all the older vans seems so much lighter. It’s all the gizmos and gadgets etc they include these days.

All we have is a bullbar, snorkel, towball, 2inch lift kit and then your small internals uhf, towpro, so there’s hardly any weight. That kerb isn’t exact we do have to get it weighed properly which hopefully might give us something to play with.

Might have to upgrade the tent instead.

It’s pretty disappointing how misleading the whole tow capacity debarkle is 😔

[GeeYou8]

Pedders have been advertising a weighing service for vehicle & trailer for $75, I was going to book in once I have added tyre racks etc. to the car trailer.

Can you reduce the towball weight below 250kg while keeping the same down force by using weight distribution hitch?

GVM is gross vehicle mass, mass is the amount of matter, not the force down on the towball (which should be measured in pounds, newtons or kiloponds), so I can't see why it would be added twice.

Graham

[BillsGU]

I have been through all this a couple of years ago - and it is complicated. If you want to PM me your phone number I will try to explain it all to you. Very basically 200kg is your "nominal" towball weight and you only need to subtract 200kg from your GVM. If you go above 200kg as well as the actual towball weight you then have an extra weight to subtract for (as was explained to me) a safety margin. All vehicles are different and the manufacturer states this figure.

You can get a GVM upgrade to 3495kg on a Patrol wagon - which for my purposes was plenty. Talk to Paul at Statewide 4X4 on 0394847838. He did my upgrade and I found him to be informative and professional. He even gave me a loan car for the time he had my Patrol.

[the evil twin]

Unfortunately, the best way to interpret how it all works is that almost all Cars and Wagons and most light commercials are designed to Carry OR Tow not Carry AND Tow.

When the various engineers in their all knowing wisdom design the vehicle and caravan they work in the "OR".

The caravan dude says my awesome 3+ ton Van can be towed by almost all larger vehicles (and he is right but the vehicle has to have almost no heavy accessories, long range tanks etc).
The vehicle manuf says my awesome Car will take you, your family and a reasonable amount of gear anywhere but not if you want to tow a gazzillion Kg's.

If you want to Tow 'heavy' and Carry 'heavy' the two are almost mutually exclusive until you enter the world of Single/Dual Cab Light Trucks or F Trucks, Chev, Dodge etc.

There is simply no way around it due to the physics.
Keeping 7 tons or more of mass going where you want and stopping when you need means full chassis, big wheels, big brakes, big suspensions, big low end torque (heavy engine and heavy drive line) which means big heavy vehicles and that means big fuel consumption so big tankage and big ancillaries.

Weight on the rear reduces braking efficiencies and the same weight further back the worse it gets so Towball download is the worst of the worst.
Rear load means you ideally need more weight on the front BUT the rear is where the Payload goes so more payload makes it even worse not better.

GVM upgrades are a bit of a bandaid in that they allow you a slight increase in payload over factory (quite legitimately).
Anything but a slight increase by usually heavier suspensions needs the full gambit of increased braking, handling tests etc, etc,

[BillsGU]

ET is correct about the engineering. That is why the GVM upgrade that I had done came with an engineers certificate that included brake and handling test results.

My only other option was to purchase a "truck" to tow my van. I was looking at an Iveco but I do a lot of 4 wheel driving and the Iveco would be limited to where it would fit. Also the cost of the upgrade was way less than a new truck.

[Dr Gary]

There is family size van built with lightweight materials that are claimed to be strong. I believe the name is "Capricorn" but I am working from memory. Built on the Queensland North coast. It was 20+ ft with all the stuff and under two tonnes. Good luck with your search.

[Dr Gary]

Just found it Bailey Rangefinder Capricorn. At 2000 kg and 27 feet it may be your solution. Check it out--not cheap but may be value.

[NissanGQ4.2]

Pedders have been advertising a weighing service for vehicle & trailer for $75,

WTF I use 2 work at a public weighbridge and could do that for like 10 bucks, although that was about 10 years ago but still can't be 75 bucks worth, I would find a local public weighbridge and stay clear of Peddlers if I was you

[jack]

This may help explain things:

CARAVAN WEIGHTS 1.jpg

[PeeBee]

Brilliantly clear Jack, thanks