My creative concept conversion – part 7

Picked up the car (17/5/12) and it seemed like a long lost friend had returned only better. It took just under two and a half months and it was worth the wait, the car looks great! The workmanship is of high standard and the car looks like it rolled off the factory floor this way. I had decided that because Concept had only limited electrical capacity that I would finish that part as opposed to having someone do this for me. The main reason for this is that I wanted to know what has been done - so this is the next task. In march when we attended the Gold Coast camping and Caravan show we bought a new winch bar and winch reasoning that our solo travel will require better recovery considerations, so spent last weekend fitting that.




We had planned for some work to be done to the van and car which required a trip to Nambour and a couple of days away to make it happen. What a great opportunity to give the rig a test run and the first thing I realised when attaching the van was that I’d probably wouldn’t need my load distribution hitch. It made sense that if the bags are automatically adjusted for weight by an actuator then the car would always sit the same way even after attaching the van, this is exactly what happened (Note this will be checked with Creative on Monday). The other thing I noticed was that the car sat marginally higher and my hitch was really too high for the van but I had no time to adjust this and will check with creative if this height will remain static – I assume so but it seems something that is worth asking.

The car and van combination is quite long and I had some reservations about parking in my driveway. I have a narrow gate in a narrow street but surprisingly this was not bad at all with the additional length. It would seem that as the rear driving axle has not been moved there has been minimal impact on the turning circle – in fact I would say it remains unchanged. There is off course an additional length behind the wheels that moves in the opposite direction when turning I would say by about 100mm. This pivoting is something to keep in mind when parking close to anything. The car felt a little stiffer and bouncier on the road with the van attached and in a lot ways it was better than a spongy feeling when over loading. It is probably too early to tell if this is a feature of airbags or just being a little light right now – time will tell. I took the car over the weigh bridge in Nambour while driving around and it came in at 3.36 tonnes with a third of a tank fuel and the following items loaded.
Tinnie tosser 40Kg
Spare 35Kg
Outboard 35Kg
Trolley Jack 20Kg
Empty Fridge 5Kg
Misc 10Kg
Total 145Kg
So the empty weight is around 3.2 tonnes and with a new GVM of 4.495 tonnes leaves approximately 1.3 tonnes or about 1 tonne after the towbar weight of the van. Anyone that has loaded gear will realise that this will add up quickly so I will do another check when loaded in the future.