I once watched a video of a young woman in America who built herself a tiny home in her parents backyard. In it, she said that she would not have anything in her new home that didn't have at least three uses. So, I walked through my own home and checked most of what I had in it and I found that having three uses for everything I owned was a big ask. I came to the conclusion that, in the beginning, you will do the best you can and as time goes on, you get better at finding the three uses for individual things. I guess, as you two did, one just has to be brutally cold-blooded about it!
The caravan industry and the state regulative is a total joke. No way should it be legal to tow that load with a light vehicle. My general rule of thumb is, no more than 2.2t max towing for a dual cab 4x4s and their wagon variants and 2.7t max tow for full size 4x4 wagons such as Landcruisers and Patrols. If the industry adopted something like this, then it would be far less confusing for the general punters and far safer out on roads for everyone. The Caravan industry needs a kick in the arse, too many people are being mislead and ripped off by this unregulated industry. Get rid of these big heavy caravans! They're not safe, and they're not necessary. Less is best, people!
Hey guys, a good ending to a very worthwhile and educational topic. Congratulations on getting your caravan and car weight compliant! Making tough decisions to remove some handy and much lived items shows your dedication and commitment to safety. Your responsible approach ensures smooth travels and a worry-free journey. Well done! 😊 thanks again for sharing this difficult personal experience with your audience. Getting the caravan and car weight compliant has sparked numerous discussions in our household regarding safety. It's a reminder of the importance of ensuring the well-being of ourselves and others when we hit the road again. Take care, and looking forward to seeing you all in the next vlog! All the best Corrie 👍
Thanks Corrie, we're stoked at what we achieved and glad to hear that we are helping the community by sharing what we've been through. I was worried about doing it but all this lovely feedback tells me I've done the right thing.
So the bullbar - is it alloy or steel. AGM or lithium battery and how many? Grey water tank? Spare wheels both van and car location. Heavy weight annex tent as well? By careful selections and relocating items I managed to get the ✅ but oh crap it was expensive! Funny thing is most of the stuff we never missed …….in fact, life on the road was easier! Good content guys👍 MUCH simpler.
Yeah, we aren't in a position to throw money at the problem which makes it harder to solve. The bull bar is steel, came with the car and wouldn't be my choice, and we did go with lithium everywhere to cut weights.
Thanks Brett & Mel, great information! Really helpful for viewers to see all the weight stats. Glad for you guys that the issue is all sorted now. It would have been a difficult job doing all the weighing and culling of items, but well worth it. Mel I know you love your beautiful colourful dresses, but just remember what Brett had to get rid of 😮 At least you know youre compliant now. This topic has caused lots of interest, so kudos to you both. Stay safe and enjoy the travels. See you next week ❤
Great video thank you. We moved up to our 1st caravan in 2012. From that time I weighed the car and van when they were empty except for full water, hot water, gas and diesel. I then started to weigh EVERYTHING before it went in the car or van, even my wife. This also includes things like, 15 cans of beer, 4 bottles of wine and clothing that stays in the van. So now I know where we are with the basic starting point when the car and van are sitting in the garage. I have the weights of 99.9% of everything as well as other gear that we then add for a trip including camera gear, fishing gear, 4wding gear and other for a specific type of trip. This is all on a very detailed spread sheet that has calculation columns and has two parts. The top part is all the gear as you would expect. The lower part is the variable part that has the different gear we may or may not take for a specific trip. For example, if we are doing a trip that may have fishing involved then all I do is put a 1 in the fishing rod calculation coloum and it adds that to the total. If I take 2 rods then put 2 in the coloum. As for food, it gets put in a basket and weighed before it goes in. We then generally only replace what is consumed. Another column has where it is stored in the car or van. Sometimes when you get a little older, you forget where you put things. It also helps for weight distribution with the ability to move to and from the car and van to move weight if needed. If my Cruiser has a full 150lts of diesel and 45lts of Gas (Diesel Gas) and another 20lts of diesel on the back, I may move some of the heavier gear to the van and this may only be temporary until the fuel load goes down. This worked well on the Nullarbor. I filled up at the cheaper fuel at one end and was able to get to the cheaper fuel at the other end with a small amount of fuel to spare.
Yeah he is not the smartest person out there. She has he shit together. But he keeps her in her place below him. As I noticed many times he would talk down to her and not let her speak and talk over the top of her.
Well done, it’s a big deal and there are no shortcuts to weight saving, no air hooks or weightless gear. Saw a guy the other day who bought a Chevy 2500 on the standard NB2 truck license (5148kg GVM), fitted it up with a canopy and a boat and all of his gear and came in at 5.9t 😳, even with an upgrade he’s only going to get 5.5t unless he spend BIG dollars on a bigger diff and a full airbag rear end, or bone breaking springs. So, yeah, overloading is easy to do.
Great follow-up guys, well done in getting the weight down. The now empty spaces in your van and canopy further highlights how many caravans out there are travelling overweight.
You need either a bigger tow vehicle or a smaller van like a camper trailer. Too many manufacturers are cooking the books on 3.5T towing! Your van isn't the problem your BT50 is too small.
Very informative video. We bought our van and like so many others thought we would be under weight. Our first couple of trips away we came across some public weigh stations and weighed our setup (as a guide). Very overweight. So we are now rejigging our setup and booked in for a professional weigh. It’s going to be interesting what the outcome will be, but I imagine the van should be under and the Toyota very close to the limit. Initially I was shocked by how much we were over. The amount of crap you take away is always nice to have at hand but at the end of the day, your on holidays and a cold beer and fishing rod should keep most content. Works for me.
Kudos to you guys. We are grey nomads so on the other end of the travelling family. but if we haven't used something in a while, it goes. It's surprising how little we need.
Kudos to you for sharing this content. Watching 12 months of van channels in preparation for our tour it's the first with this valuable content. Thanks
Awesome videos, subscribed. We bought an onroad caravan at the start of the year for doing trips (upgraded from a camper trailer we've had for some years). ATM of 1600kg, recently weighed at 1740kg. Was able to get a weight upgrade to 1820kg by engineer assessment thankfully. The plated tare was WAY off.. In hindsight, next van we buy we would definitely pay to get it weighed before purchasing just to make sure.
Good comments on the tow ball weight at around 10% but the van also looks a tad nose up, on camera anyway. Any change to towing stability given the change in geometry?
Yes, with the weight reduction in the car and a new set of bulky tyres our tow ball lifted 20mm from the original weigh. It does now sit slightly nose up as you have noticed but still towes wonderfully. We've been passed road trains at 100 and have no stability issues, so it's OK for us for now.
Great stuff guys! I see you have three jacks. Bottle, scissor, and jockey wheel. You can get an adapter fitted that would allow you to use the jockey to lift the van for a wheel change, and you could think about grabbing an old Toyota Landcruiser jack from a wrecker. These look like a botttle jack but are a mechanical screw mechanism (lighter/don't leak oil). That should allow you to ditch the scissor and bottle jacks for a few more KG..
Well done legends!! We will be getting weighed again soon, we aren’t that worried as we cull all the time, if something comes in then something goes out. But… we could very well get caught out, we shall see
Loved the two vids in these series. You had one of the best practical explanations of the types of weights you need to be mindful about. Also, lets hope a Truekit or a Takacat are on the way😁
Thanks mate. Hopefully we will have helped many people out there to realise the reality of caravan weights. See you next week, you won't be disappointed 😁
Hi there. We have been using the mavic air 2s for the last couple of years. I have just upgraded to the latest model, the air 3 but have not used it for a video.
That is what i noticed about modern offroad vans - they are all heavy!!. and as you know they a crazily loaded with mutliple slide out draws (the big sales pitch by van builders) and it adds a ton of excess weight to the build. Some are installing multiple lithium batteries (instead of 2 they put 4 in). Unfortunately their great offroad van becomes a heavy slug with all the mutliple modern cons
Yup, and as a newbie, you don't know what what you want so you just take what they give you. Our advice is to be mindful of what you put in to try and save weight.
Hi, when I prepared I made up a spreadsheet for estimations but it's long gone now. I will look to see if I can make something up again in the future but I don't have anything for you right now.
At about 4 minutes in, your caravan tow ball height is too high. Are you planning to level the attitude of the 'van? THAT SAID, your two vids here are the most amazing thing; they're perhaps the most intelligent (next to Robert Pepper's tutorials, that is) and USEFUL, helpful videos anywhere on youtube regarding travel trailer loads and weights. Thank you very very much for your efforts! Now, I go watch the rest...
Yup, we are a bit high or nose up. But it's only slight. And our towing performance is great, we don't have any stability issues. So we're just leaving it as is. As our new tyres lose tread it will slowly drop back down.
And one more thing! lol... re available cabinet/storage space and being ever-mindful of packing "light", I remember the old joke on personal finance: "I can't be overdrawn! I still have cheques!" Hahaha...
These videos would be an eye Oopener for a lot of people. Both worthwhile. I only have one concern. Were you all in the ute when that was weighed? If not, you could still be over
Well done. It's amazing how much weight is in the van structure itself. Light weighting is a challenge many racers take on. Drill holes, cut any protrusion on bolts and drill out the centres.
Thanks mate. We're stoked to have got our weights under control. It was a sh*t couple of months and hard to let go, but it also feels good to have so much more space.
G'day you guys. Thank you so much for your honest and frank video's. My partner and I are going to head off on "a big lap" in about 12 months, and the info you share is priceless. Understanding vehicle and caravan weights has been quite daunting, but these videos you have done have put my mind at ease....THANK YOU!!!!!!
Did you ever watch “ The Long Trailer” ? An hilarious movie from the 1950’s with Lucille Ball, travelling in a caravan. Unbeknownst to her husband, she had collected huge rocks and stowed them in the van. It really is funny! So take the time to watch it. Another great video folks 👍
If you were not in the car I’m guessing you and the kids weigh a total of 200 to 250 Kg which puts your car axle weights over Would like confirmation. Thanks
Yes the family was in the car for the weighing, all weighing should be completed with the payload in the vehicle, it wouldn't make much sense to do it otherwise.
Great information as always guys, well done! Perhaps look at buying a DO35 locking pin (Around 0.5 kg) to replace your 4 kg lock? Just a thought. All the best guys.
When you move onto your next caravan, how hard are you going to look at it’s as built weight. Your current Caravan is very heavily built and probably over built in many areas. What features constructed into your caravan at the end of the day you don’t need. Does the build of the van match your use for it? Could you save 100 or 300 pounds by better matching the van to its actual use? These Aussie style over-landing caravans are now becoming common here in the USA. And one of the biggest things I ave noticed is the huge weight penalty they suffer to get to the robustness levels of their construction. Those weight gains are often 400 kg or more for the same size van of traditional lighter duty construction. When your talking about 3000 to 4000 kg trailer weight limits, 400 or more kg is a bunch!
At the moment we do need the van to be robust, we go down some rough roads. We would just be more thoughtful about extras and really consider what we need if we got a new van.
Great, well done. Packed with helpful information & ideas to keep weight down. Can't believe u got rid of ur coffee machine! Safe travels , keep having FUN.❤
If you want a boat maybe you should look at a portaboat. They're a folding boat which weight about 50kg. About the same size as your tinny was. Stable to use and easy to setup. Highly recommend. Bit more expensive though.
Thanks, I'm aware of the porta boats, I've seen a few in action on the road, they look great. But we went a different path, we will share it next week.
Nothing wrong with tough love guys to keep you all safe on the road and think of the fuel you’ll save and less stress on the BT - I’ve been working on a canopy setup project on the Hilux over three years now with pretty much the same philosophy such as aluminium drawers not steel, no crazy 50kg drop slide for the fridge as like Mel I’m short so I use a 2kg foot stool as needed - I have not installed the new 50 kg trundle draw because the two side drawers carry all I need for the car - I’ve finished the kitchen side now for the clothes/electrics side and final weight test before the Spring holiday.
Smart man, even the aluminium pantry slides are heavy, but if your living out of a car and not towing a van I can see why you would want / need one. And yeah, those fridge drop downs are ridiculous that's why we went with an upright fridge.
We got rid of our bbq. With just two of us we were not using it enough. We replaced it with an induction cooktop. Took up less room and weighed a lot less. Naturally you need enough battery power an inverter for off grid. Lithium are very light compared to agm so we were all good.
Was very interested in how you went with your weights, we had our weights done recently and was very worried abouy it thankfully we are just within specs. Well done with your cull of excess weight.
I can assure you that after completing over 5000 K's on all sorts of roads, we don't have any stability issues. If I were concerned at all about handling I would immediately make adjustments. Thanks for watching and commenting.
Hitch height won't void your insurance and if it's to low it will spear into the car in a heavy breaking situation. What would this insurance accessor know with 30 years experience? E=Mc2
This is the main reason I don't like caravans and prefer camper vans or motorhomes. Driving around thousands of kilometers on country roads with weights right on the limit (or over, as most are) is just too risky. Personally, I wouldn't risk my family with the numbers where they are still. Stay safe. Don't let the tail wag the dog.
