Why such poor load carrying capacity?

Yep, beats me how they can actually carry anything and still be legal. Specially if you tow something.

G'day Axle. I remember the handbook for my 1972 Range Rover saying the tow limit was 8 ton, provided the trailer was fitted with brakes. I think a modern Discovery is 3.5 tonne now. They built them tough in those days. Have a great festive season. Bob.

Yep Beats me.

Bought a leaf sprung GU ute new in April 07 , last of the 4.2 s. Has a towing capacity of 2.5 tonne. Same vehicle with a 3 litre four cylinder rated at 3.2 tonne towing capacity. Go figure.


Cheers Teza

Axle,
I think there is a lot of poetic licence from manufactures when it comes to towing ability. Every year it goes up but those old cruisers have the same chassis as my old girl and if it is a 12ht motor no more torque than the 1HZ, they do have better brakes but that doesn't come into it because the trailer is braked.

Your good old valiant could cruise down the road easily at 100kph with its front legs just touching the ground, try stopping the old girl or changing direction. Have carried 10m + loads of wet sand with boggie drive tippers and the truck would do it with no problems at all, legal no bloody way and all ok till you tried to stop, have even had to shovel part of the load off because the hydraulics couldn't lift the it.

I don't know how they rate tow vehicles but to rate a roadtrain it must be able to take off on an incline of X % can't remember the exact figure.

A manufacturer must state that a certain vehicle complies with the Australian design rule, they only have problems if an accident happens and the vehicle is proven not to comply. You gotta love self regulation.

Have a good one

On your weekly fishing trip Axle?

Axle's last fishing trip

1997 discovery specifies that you can tow 4T but there in small print only allowed 150Kg on the towball ridiculous !!
merry xmas all
bill

The evidence from a number of patrol owners who have suffered torn spring mounts and cracked chassis on their vehicles indicates to me that the loading specifications are not just bureaucratic restrictions, but actual engineering limits.

Whatever happened to the law in NSW which stated that "the laden weight of a trailer cannot exceed the unladen weight of the vehicle" and that would include braked trailers?

Honky

The point that seems to be being missed here is that manufacturers are trying to satisfy two opposing and largely mutually exclusive requirements, namely:

1 A nice comfortable quiet sedan like ride for shopping trolley use 11 months of the year.

2 Large carrying capacity for the big annual trip.

You don't need to be an engineer to work out that you need to compromise somewhere.

As most (numerically) modern 4WD's are used for Number 1 most of the time that's what manufacturers go for. It's what sells.