Understanding Tow Ball Weight

You’re not missing anything, but a car or 4wd that has a 2500kg capacity and only 150kg ball weight is not really designed to tow 2500kg !!
No matter what the manufacturer says, if it really had the capacity to tow 2500kg, it really should have a ball weight of 250kg.
Generally, approx 10% of van weight is engineered into a van for ball weight.

I speculate that if the van has a ball weight of 243kg that would probably mean the van has a tare weight around 2400kg.
A tare weight means absolutely bare bones, no water in the tanks, empty gas bottles, no linen, clothes/luggage food or water. You can add at least 200kg if not closer to 400kg for those items when packing for a 2 weeks trip which means you are likely to exceed your vehicles towing capacity.

I've done silly things in ignorance in my younger years and got away with it exceeding my vehicles Gross Combined Mass (van + vehicle), but if I had an accident my insurer would not have covered me.
Some say the sensible towing capacity is 80% of the stated towing capacity, especially if towing on rough/dirt roads.

Best of luck.

From memory my first tow vehicle - a 2004 Pajero - had the specs in the handbook showing a 150 kg towball limit on a standard tow hitch which put the wind up me until I found a plate on the hitch showing it was a weight distribution hitch which was legal for 250 kg. ( I bought it second hand in 2007).

Might pay to check your handbook specs. Good luck.

Regards - Phil

Not good to only be allowed 150kg on the ball and my concern is that your vehicle and caravan will be an unstable combination. 150kg is what you find on most camper trailers.
Ball weight is a variable though and actual ball weight depends on water tanks and how you load the caravan. It usually gets heavier. My 2.5T caravan had 140kg at tare and is 180-240kg when loaded. A mate's 2.5T van has 208kg on the plate and is 300kg when loaded.

You need a dog trailer style.

Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome

First of all you need to know the full weight of your tow vehicle ..fully loaded full tanks people gear then you need to know all this jargon
below I have been using Jackson's 4 x 4 tow vehicle calculator for the weights
My guess would be that you would only be able to tow a camp trailer or light caravan legally

The 10% of the trailer weight is a convention in Australia apparently followed by most trailer manufacturers, and appears to have been derived initially from American practice.
European vehicles guidelines are usually based on 5%, so my VW has a 2000kg tow limit with a 100kg ball weight.
The European trailer industry seems to therefore build around these lower ball limits despite their higher road speeds.

The arguments around ball weights concerns a lot of anecdotal experiences with trailer stability.
The problem as I see it is that most of our stuff is built big and heavy instead of smart ,strong and stable.

Trailers move in three dimensions so height and shape, ie roll centres, centre of gravity, suspension type and aerodynamics all play a part in stability, not just the two dimensional aspect of ball and trailer weight.

With some vehicles you may get away with exceeding your ball weight, however that brings in other factors such as .
Stressing the structure of the rear of your vehicle.
Overloading your tyres
Overloading your rear axle and or wheel bearings.
Interfering with the actions of stability controls, ABS and traction controls.
Causing your bum to drag.
You may also find that trying to compensate by adding load levellers is not recommended by European manufacturers due to the stresses that places on the rear floor pan via the towbar.

So what is the answer? Well if we push trailer (caravans, campers etc) to build smarter not heavier, then we would have greater choice without having to change to heavier tow vehicles.

Regards

A

Hi Andrew
An interesting observation.
I'm guessing that European roads are generally a lot better than Australian roads. Can't remember driving on a gravel road in Europe ........ many years ago.
Given our huge distances, and many poor /rough surfaces, corrugations, washouts etc that Aussie trailers very often have to deal with, I would guess that obvious thing to would be to build stronger and necessarily heavier.

Just an uneducated guess about the difference.

Cheers
Jim

.
When I read of all the confusion/ignorance/disregard of the factors about towing it scares the hell out of me when I get anywhere near these rigs on the road at Vr (rotation speed).

I was looking a few yrs ago at the weight of on road vans and they have gotten very heavy these days especially with all the extras people want in them. I found Jergens vans to be lighter than most.