Reducing towball weight 160kg

I think you will be overloading your Camry. 200kg of load is not much allowance, particularly if you are going to carry gas and water with you. With a tare weight of 1,000kg your ATM will be 1,300kg which exceeds the rating of your tug. Also FWD vehicles need a weight distribution hitch (WDH) to maintain traction - you will need a Hayman Reese 550 hitch if you can not reduce the ball weight to under 100kg.

A van at a maximum load of 1,300kg and a ball weight of 90kg only has a 6.9% ball weight, well under the recommended 10%. Shifting the spare tyre and other heavy items to the rear to reduce the ball weight is likely to reduce the stability of your van.

PeterD

I had a similar issue with towing my boat with my Adventra when I first got it. The headlights were stargazing a bit. Worked out that if I keep some items on the back seat, along with 80lt fuel, it was enough to redistribute the weight. Mind you, I have a tandem trailer as well. I also upgraded to a 2100kg tow pack.

Where is the water tank, fore or aft of the axle? If aft, keep it filled. Move the spare & maybe add a second. Even redistributing some of the van's contents can help a bit. It may be a big job to relocate the axle forward.

My dad used to tow a similar van with a Magna Altera without any probs. I thought the Camry was rated to 1500kg but obviously not. Good luck with it.

now i am sure this will start a few arguments. i am about to do a LPG conversion on my prado. will give me great fuel savings compare to straight petrol. i have spoken to many others running LPG on their 4wds and all say same thing - fantastic. cost to convert is $2300. government rebate is $2000. last guy i spoke to (yesterday) doesnt even bother to run his landcruiser on petrol anymore - for regular use, 4wding or towing.

so there are options there if you want them. you have the option of using the LPG or petrol. cheers

In all honesty, I don't think the solution to your problems will be easily achieved. To move the spare wheel to the rear of the van might indeed reduce some of the ball weight but in doing so it will increase the rear weight which is very likely to start causing an imbalance of the van. Van's are engineered (believe it or not) with due consideration to their chassis length, axle capacity, wheel size, van weight front and rear etc. To start moving things around to try and achieve a lower towball weight may cause more problems than you already have. It would seem that the car and van are simply not matched to one another. I suggest that if you insist on retaining the same tow vehicle/van combination, you should seek some expert advice. Perhaps you could start with your local Hayman Reese distributor or a Tow Bar manufacturer. Someone with industry experience and knowledge of the forces at play and resulting dangers if you fail to abide by some basic principles.

In my humble opinion tow anything more then 500kg by FWD car is plainly crazy – does not matter what manufacturer saying, I recon you just ask for trouble. In my opinion if you really set yourself on van, than you should change your tow car. Not need to have “big guzzler” – you can walk away with old gas RWD falcodore. They quite cheap and you can even have one for towing only, thus keeping your nice Camry for everyday civilized driving.
Cheers.
Serg.

All kinds of insurance and legal implications apart from the issue of whether it is safe.