Nose weight
Hi can anyone help I need to adjust the nose weight of my caravan, having recently purchased a 9 yr old Bailey Pegasus I need to achieve a nose weight of 70 to 80kg and I'd like some advice as to the best way to achieve this.
Just loaded the van with our bits and pieces etc and nose weight currently 95kg.
Comments
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well the items in the front locker will have the largest impact on nose weight, do you have two gas bottles in there, is there any heavy items you could store elsewhere? And inside, any heavy items nearer the front in the bed boxes? Also do you travel with your water tank full?
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Nothing in the front locker, tanks empty, I'm told that putting heavier items towards the back of the van should lift the nose, but I read that this is not the best practice, used the caravan club match service and the caravan and car are a good match.
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Ok, not one gas bottle? what was the nose weight before you put anything in? And where are the item in your van (aquaroll, wastemster...)
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what are your heavy items?
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Putting heavier items towards the back is not good practice s it will make the caravan more prone to swaying and if taken to extreme could be dangerous. Not sure how you overcome this easily as it is a fault with the caravan design. You could look at upgrading the tow cars suspension.
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with our bits and pieces etc and nose weight currently 95kg.
I would be happy to get the nose weight of my Bailey down to that!
How are you measuring the nose-weight, John?
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If you have nothing in the front locker and have loaded the van with the items you wish to take I would suggest you will not reach your target of 70-80Kgs. All you can do is load to the rear as much as possible its not ideal but the Dutch manage to get around with a bike on the back of their vans.
I take it you are measuring on level ground with the caravan level using bathroom scales or an accurate nose weight measure.
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I think I'm right in saying that if on an Alko chassis, the maximum load on the hitch shouldn't exceed 100kg. My car is rated at a maximum load of 140kg on the towbar but I wouldn't go anywhere near that.
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John are you sure the noseweight needs to be that low? Most caravans are 100kgs but your car tow hitch weight maybe take less and that is the figure you should use. I run at 95 kgs with a VW Tiguan with a Bailey Ranger both 'plated' at 100kgs noseweight. The higher the noseweight the better the stability.
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From my observations, the majority of family cars have a nose weight limit around the 70/80Kg referred to by the OP. Noseweights of 100Kg are usually the province of SUVs/ Crossovers.
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We are still waiting for OP to come back with details of his tow vehicle. But to help him re loading, advice is given in Club handbook where principle is heavy stuff low and above axle, lighter stuff low and elsewhere but ensure you are near your max allowed noseweiht. We put the awning in the car so if OP can do this would help his problem. I would struggle to get a noseweiht of 70 - 80 kgs.
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When I first loaded our new Knaus Starclass 695 and checked the noseweight, it was 80kg which I thought was far too low. It has a huge end bathroom with two wardrobes in it, so there is an open invitation for Ros to pile as many clothes in as possible. Potentially dangerous.
However, I checked with Knaus UK and their advice was that the 'recommended' noseweight was 75kg. Unbelievable!
Regardless of that, I have rearranged the stored items - mainly by loading up the vast front gas locker and got the noseweight up to 90/95kg which I feel far happier with and I have to say the van feels as stable as anything when towing.
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We are picking up a new,to us, 2010 Bailey Pegasus 554 in the week. We will be looking to achieve approx 5% of the Max weight as the noise weight...approx 75kg. It will obviously be empty but when we load up we shall have an awning to carry in the van and as previously said we would move it forward or back from the axle centre line until we achieve the correct weight. Be interesting to see how we get on
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sorry folks Internet at home went down and its taken an age to fix, "Easy T" in answer to your question I have a Bailey Pegasus 534, MTPLM 1482Kg. My tow car is a Ssangyong Korando the Caravan Club Match service has this combination as a good match the only sticking point is the nose weight my Korando has an 80kg nose weight the club say that this easily achievable provided care is taken when loading so far I've got the nose weight down to 75kg ish but I've had to put the awning under the fixed bed and put quite a bit of weight at the back of the van something I'm not to happy with
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sorry folks Internet at home went down and its taken an age to fix, "Easy T" in answer to your question I have a Bailey Pegasus 534, MTPLM 1482Kg. My tow car is a Ssangyong Korando the Caravan Club Match service has this combination as a good match the only sticking point is the nose weight my Korando has an 80kg nose weight the club say that this easily achievable provided care is taken when loading so far I've got the nose weight down to 75kg ish but I've had to put the awning under the fixed bed and put quite a bit of weight at the back of the van something I'm not to happy with
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Its interesting that this years " towcar of the year" in the Best large family category is the skoda Kodiaq and yet this has a 80Kg nose weight limit, it seems that most modern car manufacturers seem to be settling for a nose weight of between 70 and 90Kg.
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I had same problem with my Pegasus which was a similar year, the only way I resolved it was by removing the front drawer unit altogether and sold it.
never missed it really and the all round seating came in handy.
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The Kodiaq has a NW limit of 100kg on some models, 80kg on others.
I've towed a Valencia which was 90kg exworks and to get the NW down only carried a gaslite in the front middle locker, and not much else, nothing with any weight in the front side lockers either.
Under the bed i moved the spare wheel as far back as possible, put the two empty water barrels and waste in the rear shower, and fitted the mover behind the axle to reduce NW by around 4kg.
Mainslead as far back on the floor as allowed, not much under the front side berths, and nothing heavy in the front lockers.
Don't worry about back loading in practise it makes no difference, I towed like this for 6 years years.
Its the NW thats important, the heavy the better, I towed with an Xtrail, and CX-5 the latter only had a 88kg NW (new ones only 84kg) and i could get 80 to 88kg no problem.
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How can you be towing a pendulum, as most caravans have plenty of weight built in with cookers and fridges in the middle.
My present caravan has 40kg on the rear bike rack and the tow is rock solid with only 85kg NW, I have to load lots forward with that caravan just to get the target NW.
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Up to a couple of years ago the accepted advice was to put heavier items low down near to the axle of a caravan and to avoid heavy weights at the rear, to prevent a pendulum effect
Then Swift group introduced a cycle carrier on the rear of their caravans so a heavy weight, high up at the rear of the caravan. Not a dicky bird in any review regarding stability So question is, was the original advice wrong? Or was it correct and expediently ignored? Because the positions are mutually exclusive
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