Chassis Ball weight / water tank experiment

[twscoot]

Did a little experiment today as I emptied my tanks to put in some fresh water.

Van was on a slight upward incline but the figures are still quite meaningful. Starcraft outback 20.62-3.

Two standard 80 litre (80kg of water) tanks. Front one well forward of the axle. Rear tank sitting just behind the rear axle.

Both tanks full. Ball weight (with most of my gear in it) 260kg. (Gets close to 300kg when fully loaded and level).

Emptied the front tank. (Full rear tank). Ball weight went down to 220kg.

Emptied the rear tank (front ball weight increased to 240kg

Summary for my circumstances.

Front tank evenly spreads weight of 80kg thus applying 4okg of weight to ball.

A full rear tank takes only about 20kg off the ball weight.

Hope this is helpful.

 

[Bushman]

A while back I was playing around with the ball weights on our (now parted) 16-49-3 and found emptying the front tank (also 80 ltrs) only dropped the ball weight buy 10kg, didn't drain the back one to see the difference.

Be interesting to see what the new one with dual axles a twin tanks will be like,

 

[twscoot]

The closer the tank is to the axle the less effect it has on the ball weight (up and down). I think our old 16.49-2 had the tank just forward of the axle so would have been the same.