Hi Greg here kiwi wanderers i'm going to talk today about weighing our vehicle
so sandy and i and holly the dog live in our Jayco caravan full-time and um before we bought
this combination no ute in that caravan we did quite a bit of research to make sure that uh
well one of the factors we considered was the weight of the whole thing
um and yeah that's why we purchased these guys because they can you know they work well together
but with all the theoretical calculations in the world you cannot beat going over a weigh
bridge so that's what we did and it's not just as simple as just driving onto a weigh bridge and
uh taking the number um there's a whole lot of different the the ute has to weigh a certain
amount and the trailer can only weigh a certain amount and the combination can only weigh a
maximum amount and the toe ball weight that's a separate can weight as well so what i'm going to
do today is try and explain all those weights because i found it uh it took a little bit of
time for me to get my head rounded and yeah hopefully it'll be of some use to you guys so
the weigh bridge experience was pretty hassle-free um we used weighing in measuring solutions i think
i'll put a link down below and they have way bridges uh scattered throughout the country um
you ring them up when you're approaching the way bridge and they drive you on and take your details
and send you a bill 20 dollars plus gst i think uh it uh yeah it was pretty easy to do actually
they have a split way bridge so or this one was a split way bridge so we just drove on
wound the jockey wheel down and then got two weights or so one for the tow vehicle and
one for the caravan yeah it was uh it was very easy to do
okay let's have a go at explaining all these weights so the gvm stands for gross vehicle meth
and it's the maximum weight that the tow vehicle can be and it's set by the manufacturer of the tow
vehicle the gtm which is gross trailer mass and that's the maximum weight that the trailer can be
set by the trailer manufacturer the tbm stands for tow ball mass and all that's the weight that the
tow ball is pushing down uh the tow bar is pushing down onto the tow ball the weight of the trailer
and then gross combination mess so that's the maximum weight the whole combination weighs
so the toe vehicle and ut is a ford ranger xlt ford ranger and with sandy and i full of fuel
and e-bikes in the back as we would be normally traveling it weighed 2 600 kilos
we've got to add to that the weight of the tow ball so we have a tow ball gauge
to measure that and i'll do a little show you a little video on that um it
that was 320 kilos so that means we were 2920 kilograms and ford say the the maximum that you
can be is 3200 kilograms so we have in the ute we have an expert payload of 280 kilos
so that's uh that's pretty good we then weighed the caravan which unfortunately
was a different story so the caravan weighed in at three three four oh kilograms on the scales
we need to subtract from that the 320 kilos which is the tow wall weight so we did that and our
gross trailer mess was 3020 kilos um and so sorry holly just needs a bit of a pet here do you want
to be in the video holly do you and this is this is holly being a nuisance yes exactly um and so
the maximum gvm from jayco or gross trailer mess from jayco is 2939 kilograms it's on the sticker
and the front boot of the caravan so we were 81 kilos overweight so that was not that good
of course some of the things that contributed to our axle extra weight are the extras that we
got fitted motor movers extra fresh tank extra battery extra solar large inverter
big grey tank they all uh make a difference so that's why our caravan is at the top end
right we talked about tow ball mess so we've got to measure that on the front of the
tow ball of the trailer um i bought a little gizmo from a eureka i think for about
60 or 70 dollars um and yeah that sort of works like this and there we are 320
kilos on the tow bar so yeah now we've just got to sort out the gross combination mess so
this is what the whole unit weighs and so a caravan full of water and everything we're
81 over in our tow vehicle we've got 260 kilos to play with so it looks like a pretty simple
swap some stuff from the caravan to the uh to the tow vehicle and uh goodness me we've got a
lot of stuff in this caravan the jayco storage is just unbelievable it just goes on and on
um yeah consequently there's not a lot now you'd a couple of e-bikes and that's
about it so that's about to change we've um we've swapped over some chairs uh yeah big heavy chairs
we've put our awning in the ute uh we've put some beverages that were in a
little suitcase i'm not going to tell you too much about that and we have yeah some computer
gear and uh drone and everything is now in the ut so we've measured them all and we've
got about 90 kilos has gone through there the yeah obviously the awning was the biggest part of that
we've got 280 kilos to spare in the ute we haven't actually got that much we're only 60 kilos under
our gvm and i think that's where a lot of people get caught you know there's plenty of room for
stuff on the ute i mean we could put another two adults in the back seats before and we would have
still been okay with the ute but uh the gvm we would have been significantly over so yeah
the other thing which i haven't mentioned is axle weights so if the trailer manufacturer
and the vehicle manufacturer has maximum axle weights i haven't measured these individually
um but i'm reasonably sure that i'm okay and the reasoning around that is i have tire pressure
monitors on all the both the trailer and the car and the temperatures uh just come up evenly so
there's not one set of that one axle that's rocket sappy and um it's hotter than the
rest they all come up by about three psi when we're up and running so yeah
okay so summing up i think that most people uh would be okay pretty good with their weights
but you can get caught by that gross combination mess in our case our youth can take 3200 kilos and
it can tow three thousand five hundred kilos obviously if it did that uh that would be
six thousand seven hundred kilos which is miles over its uh gross combination mess so yeah
just something to think about all the different weights and once you know what they mean you can
uh try and abide by the rules yeah thanks for watching i've got more videos coming up still
doing compiling the one with all the tech in the van that'll be quite good and uh probably going
to do one on vehicle servicing that the kilometers you should do between services in my opinion and
yeah so if you enjoyed this video please subscribe and please click the like button thank you