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Tow Ball Weight


Ian and Jill Brown

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Hi everyone,

We have just weighed our 18' TE with the outboard mounted up front, 2 x gerry cans and a little firewood.

The tow ball weight was 420 kg's (the van weighed 3300 kg's)!

Has anyone experienced this and if so, what are the options to get our van back to the 350kg rating?

Any advice would be most appreciated, though we will be talking to the Kedron boys as well.

Ian & Jill Brown

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Hi Ian & Jill

We have been in a similar position. Our ATV (stated as 19ft, but we measure internally as 20ft, depends on where you measure!) weights are much the same as yours, and we have travelled full time for 2 years now, and 28,000 Km. At the time of ordering we discussed weights and tow vehicles with Kedron; we would characterize the discussions as ‘non committal’. We bought a 100 series Landcruiser which, after going over a weigh bridge, we found to be overloaded when fully loaded. Initial options seemed to be change vehicle or van; we decided to accept the situation but try to minimize the risks. For power we fitted a 3inch exhaust system, really made a difference, and had ARB upgrade our suspension. At the first tyre change we went for a higher load index tyre (BF Goodrich). In the van we modified the water plumbing so that all three tanks could be used independently. While travelling we fill the rear (60L) tank only to get weight behind the axles. When bush camping we may fill the rear 80L tank as well, but only at the last possible fill point. We carry a water bladder (40L we think) and a spare pump so that we can draw water from a creek or other source and transfer to the van tanks as needed. We seldom fill the jerry cans, only when we really need to. This has worked reasonably well, we can generally keep the ball weight down to 380kg, say 80% of the time, but this is still overloaded. We found that there was too much weight on the rear vehicle wheels, the 750 weight distribution hitch was not quite coping. So we recently upgraded to a 1000lb distribution hitch (not straight forward) which has helped to transfer more weight to the front.

Hope this is of some help, if you want any more details just ask.

Robert & Jane Jones, currently near Darwin.

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Hi Ian and Jill

Are these weights with the water tanks filled also? Assuming one of your water tanks is at the front of the van (and it is not your drinking water) you could work out a way to leave it empty, thereby taking some weight from the ball. Perhaps carry the wood in the rear of your vehicle, or move the outboard to another location.

Any answers to your weight issue will not be what you want to hear, but everything is a compromise.

I am sure the Kedron boys will make some suggestions when you speak with them.

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Hi Ian & Jill

Good on you for actually weighing it - a lot of people guess their towball weight and van weight and then present it as fact :confused:

I'm assuming you have a front bed model with all that lovely storage space up front to fill up so the only real options are to cut back on what you pack, relocate some heavier stuff in front of the axle to behind the axle which doesn't mean build a big storage box on the rear and fill it with heavy stuff.

Maybe look at moving the front water tank to behind the axles.

Last option is buy a F250 :sad:

Cheers

Darryl

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G'day Ian and Jill.

Not that this can help you in your current situation, but reflective of what you are talking about, is our last submission to the thread in "Around the Campfire" section about what you would change if you were to get a new Kedron van now.

In that post one of the things we mention is to have the rear bar extended and have all of the batteries mounted in a box located on the rear bar. I would do this because it would move a lot of weight behind the axle.

To me this ball weight is a design issue, not just with Kedron vans, but with most others on the market. The axles are well to the rear of the the centre of the van in oder to get weight over the ball. The problem is that nearly all of the storage space is forward of the axles (including water storage.)

The seemingly obvious answer is to move the axles forward a bit. This will affect the approach and departure angles of the van a bit, but so be it. The main benefit is that at least one more of the water tanks could be moved aft of the axles and the other front tank moved closer to the rear.

Sorry about the irrelevent waffle but I think that some of these ideas need to be in the public domain for comment. Now to address your problem.... Have you ever seen those swing around outboard motor and gerry can mounting frames on camper trailers? If you could source one of those that could be adapted to fit on the rear bar of the caravan you would be able to shift 30Kg or so to the rear of the van. In doing this you would have a net reduction of over 80Kg from the ball weight. (30Kg off the front bringing your weight down to 390Kg, then 30Kg plus about another 30Kg for the bracket adding a total of 60Kg to the rear, taking another 50Kg off the ball. The ball weight should then be around 340Kg. No, the sums aren't wrong, the weight will be proportioned due to the axles being rear of centre.)

Other than this, all you can do is run with your front water tanks empty where possible and be sure that the rear tank is full as often as possible.

Cheers

Russ

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  • 3 weeks later...

Following Russ's suggestion we have now relocated our swing over outboard mounting bracket to the rear bar of our ATV. The original "slip n easy" outboard mounting bracket was supplied by Kedron fitted to the front A-frame. We were able to change this as we run with only one spare wheel on the rear bar. We feel confident with this as the interchangeable spare from our 100 series means we have two spares in reality, and we have successfully used our tyre repair kit in the past. We positioned the outboard bracket over the spare mounting point so it takes most of the load, and made up an additional bracket as shown in the attached photo.

Robert & Jane Jones

post-112-1251437588_thumb.jpg

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  • 5 months later...

HI People

We have the exact problem. Purchased our 22ft ATV Kedron 7 months ago, we argueed and argued with Kedron pointing out it was not legal and they final removed the front 100LT tank and inserted a 60 Lt tank at the very rear. It hasn't solved the problem totally but it has improved it. We have the 2 spare tyres on the rear bar which we want to carry so there is no where we can move the 2 jerry canto and we carry the 15 Hp outboard inside the back of our Landcruiser (Diesel).

Question: The Gall Boys told us it is illegal to mount Jerry Cans on the rear bumper in some states of Australia, does any one know if this true?

George & Marilyn

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With regard to moving/attaching things to the rear of a caravan - there have been some discussions on the Caravaners Forum on this topic. Some there were of the opinion that such action may upset the 'balance' the van was originally designed for.

Just of interest van owners may also want to have a look at the Vehicle Standards Bulletin 1 for trailers VSB 1. See 21.2 for rear overhang.

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