Weight distribution

Allam,

Best bet would be to distribute stuff evenly (weight wise) between the car and trailer as much as possible, but of course you have to consider the convenience factor for when you are on the road.

As long as you don't overload the trailer - and therfore the towball of the car - you should be able to put most stuff where you want it.

Hope this helps.

I dont think your engine would really know where the extra weight is considering the two are joined....

You should get roughly the same consumption from a diesel irrespective of towing or fully loaded - the trick though is to make sure you don't fully load the trailer then because there is more room now avail pack the sh*t out of the car. The legal speed limit for towing in WA is 100km/h and a fully loaded 4WD shouldn't really be punted along much more anyway (I know people can do 140+ with their fully loaded 5tonne patrol/cruiser etc but what sort of medal do they want?). Once over the 100km/h region they will drink the diesel like a petrol anyway. As for towing along the GRR - take it easy and you will have no problems. I have towed an 'off road' 7x4 trailer all over the place for the past 10yrs and had great time doing it. Now the kids have abandonded Dad and are in to their own interests it is time to do lots of 1 person packing and that is proving to be a challenge. Funny how you get so used to having everything in its place and set up for camping and adventuring for 6 then it takes ages to sort out what goes where for just 1. rgds

Allan,

Generally speaking I agree with what has been said above. What we do (family of 5) is pack all our food camping gear and clothes etc in the trailer. The car carries the tools, spares and most importantly the recovery gear. I once made the mistake of carrying the shovel on the front of the trailer, this was very convenient, most of the time. It proved to be extremely inconvenient,however, when on a day trip about 100k from the camper and bogged to the door sills in soft sand.

The only exception is the fridge which stays in the car. We often need that for the day trips out of camp anyway.

Once again I am turning green.
Duncs

Amen to most of that Revs.........
My practice usually is.....
1. Some things must be in the car (as Duncs said - recovery !!) . Do that first.
2. Spread the other goods across 6 wheels to even the tyre load. Overloading stresses tyres !
3. Adjust the trailer balance to always have some download on the ball - varies a lot car to car but is mostly somewhere between 50 and 250 kg - as I understand it, you must have some (min of 50) but the max is set by your car specs and towbar limit)....see many previous posts here.