How to bend a ute

[Cuppa]

http://www.4x4australia.com.au/drive/1504/bent-utes/

[Rock Trol]

On our Simpson trip in 2013 we saw a Navara D40 at Dalhousie springs with a bent chassis. It had been towing a hard floor camper with the longest draw bar I had ever seen. Not sure of the make.
This camper had 2 large boxes on the front (Tool + fridge) and then gas bottles. The wheels where near the back of this contraption so depending on what he had stored in there (generator? chainsaw? etc) the weight would have been on the rear of the ute. Not sure what he had in the tray either.

I think its good advice even though I have not followed it. By the time I had put all the bar work and drawers in the wagon my tare was up over 2.8 tons. Still don't know what I weighed when I left Adelaide fully loaded.

[Getaboutabit]

That's a good read No real surprises in it
Common sense is always best (although rare)
Best advise would be take what you need Load vehicle
properly with quality suspension and you should be fine

[macca]

Was thinking about air bags, might get the springs reset instead.

Liked the idea of adjustment in relation to the load. But not now LOL.

A mates patrol has the leaves assisted by air bags with no problems, we did talk about the load being put at the wrong part of the chassis which he is not worried about. Might send him the link so he is aware of the problems and why.

Thanks Cuppa

[Cuppa]

As I mentioned elsewhere the Patrol leafy cabs used as mine support vehicles in the Latrobe Valley initially used air bags as a means of carrying the constant heavy loads they are subjected to, but the local spring works won’t fit them any more because of the number of cracked chassis’ which resulted. When I was looking at what to do with mine I was strongly advised not to use airbags, in fact they told me they wouldn’t fit them & that if I insisted on having them I would have to get them fitted elsewhere - this from a place who could have supplied them.

[AB]

On our Simpson trip in 2013 we saw a Navara D40 at Dalhousie springs with a bent chassis. It had been towing a hard floor camper with the longest draw bar I had ever seen. Not sure of the make. This camper had 2 large boxes on the front (Tool + fridge) and then gas bottles. The wheels where near the back of this contraption so depending on what he had stored in there (generator? chainsaw? etc) the weight would have been on the rear of the ute. Not sure what he had in the tray either. I think its good advice even though I have not followed it. By the time I had put all the bar work and drawers in the wagon my tare was up over 2.8 tons. Still don't know what I weighed when I left Adelaide fully loaded.

interesting you said that, we saw a gq with extended tray that broke the chassis playing around hard on big red heading to dalhousie...lol

[Winnie]

interesting you said that, we saw a gq with extended tray that broke the chassis playing around hard on big red heading to dalhousie...lol

That guy is from Warragul and it was a repair job that wasn't repaired so well... So it had happened before. Apparently he kept playing on big red even though he knew the chassis had split

[Stropp]

I remember that one

[macca]

There was a patrol in the workshop at Birdsville in 2008, the full length roof rack was covered in Gerry's and swags, the back was chockers and had 5 blokes in it.
The chassis had cracked and couldn't get it repaired in the Alice, so did the Simpson Crossing anyway.
The towbar was nearly on the ground, we spoke to one of the passengers and said it's a write off but the owner wanted to truck it home to Brisbane to salvage the mods.
From what we gathered the 5 of them were not talking to each other and were having trouble getting home from there.
Couldn't believe the whole thing, a sad story.

[Winnie]

Couldn't believe the whole thing, a sad story.

It gets less sad when you realise it could have been easily avoided though.