Thanks Warren,
travelling on your own sounds bliss! We mostly stay in van parks as well and tend not to travel too far from home as we do live in a pretty great part of the world. Hope to do a bit more free camping as the kids get older. We have taken 2 cars away before if we are travelling up to an hour away but always loaded into one for trips further than that. Would really like to be able to all travel in the one car most of the time. We are doing a bit of a trip around Tassie in about a years time so it won't be an option then. We were able to get 600kg payload for the van so I am confident we can keep the weight down there especially not filling the water tanks. Its the car that is the problem! We won't have a choice but to get a GVM upgrade. Sadly a new cruiser is definitely not an option (especially after just getting the van) so we are looking a something second hand. There was one car we enquired about that already had a GVM upgrade of almost 500kg. I am still unsure of all the legal aspects, if the plated ATM of the van and the GVM of the car are over the GCM then will you still be covered by insurance if you didn't utilise all the payload and had your whole rig weighed and knew you were safely under? I guess if you were involved in an accident it would be tough to prove how much everything weighed. If this is the case then if our van ATM is around 3300kg then we should only increase the GVM of the car 200kg even if not fully loading the van? Does any of this make any sense?
Welcome anyone with any information. I could have the whole thing completely wrong.
Kerb weight (kg) 2740 (without bull bars roof racks etc)
- Gross vehicle mass (kg) 3350 (fully fuelled and loaded including accessories, people and dogs)
- Gross combination mass (kg) 6850 (this is for both Car and Van)
- Gross trailer weight braked (kg) 3500
@NoWorries is spot on, if you are going for say a 2014 model GXL you will get an extra 105kg also.
Work backwards if you want, start with 3350kg, minus the following;
Tare weight approx. 2635kg
Fuel 138kg
2 adults 160kg
4 kids under 7 120kg (they will grow)
This leaves you 297kg approx for items in the car. (less coolant oil etc but neigh)
I don't know your van Tare weight but mine is 2529kg with an ATM of 3095kg, and the other thing of weight I did not add was the 3rd tank so yours would roughly be around an additional 90kg giving you a rough ATM of 3200-3300kg.
So you now have 897kg of items to split 600 in the van and 297kg for the cruiser. Bearing in mind you have limited space once the back seats are up in the cruiser.
The only thing of any real weight I have is the full annex and floor which is in separate bags and loaded over the axles plus the baby Q which goes in the boot of the car.
Think about how many clothes can fit into a holiday suitcase yet this averages only 25-30kg in weight (incl the case) so no issues there.
Food and drink will be the next to think about, we stock up some before we go but we get the cases of water and beer + ice when we get close to where we are going.
Bikes for the kids, you probably need to figure out how to carry these first if you are going in one car, I cant figure out the best way to carry these yet until I do a few more trips, there seems to be negatives with every option but the roof is looking to be the best option for me.
Tables and chairs, 6 of these at an avg of 5kg is fine and a table at 10kg, not an issue.
In a nutshell I don't think you have anything to worry about at all, as
@bigcol has mentioned, weigh everything individually the first time you pack and you will be surprised how much is rally going in. You will still be able to have one o f he tanks full for when you go free camping.
However if you start to add bull bars, side steps, tool boxes etc etc then you may start to get border line.
When you find the car you want inbox me and I will check to make sure you are paying the right money if you like, peace of mind is everything when spending as much money as you guys are.
Good point above from
@steen rasmussen regarding booking in to sites by the way.
One tip from me on the van, the internal tv has a cigarette style power point and aerial in the side of the washing machine wall which sticks out over the mattress when it is down. So basically remove these before you lift or drop the mattress as it will snap them trust me!!!!
Let us all know how you go. Good luck and great choice of van ( a little biased)