Real world weight issues - Fiberglass RV
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Old 05-02-2003, 03:34 PM   #1
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Real world weight issues

Pondering weight a lot lately. Like many (most?) owners, I did not weigh my Casita when I picked it up at the factory. In a daze of optimistic acceptance I began my calculations with the factory estimate and took it from there.

On this last trip I had two friends with access to scales and took them up on offers to use them. Both are certified commercial scales. First I weighed my truck, an F150 X-cab with 8-foot bed and f/g cap. 6070 pounds. Eee-yow! I max out, according to the manual, at 6250. This weight did NOT include about 140 pounds of stuff that usually rides in the truck but had been left at the campsite. The neccesity of truck-diet began to loom. The weight of the truck surprised and worried me quite a bit.

Next I weighed the truck on my other friend's scale, which would take only one axle at a time. I got 3180 for the front and 2820 for the back, for a total of 6000 pounds. This made both scales read almost exactly the same as I had run some gas out of it since the first weighing.

Finally, ready for the road and with Otra in tow, I returned to the single axle scale to weigh the whole rig as I was going to be (and had been) traveling with it. Front axle weighed 3060, rear axle (trailer attached) weighed 3500, and the trailer axle weighed 2780. That total of 9340 was about a ton lighter than my specified maximum combined GVW, so I was OK on that score. But my truck was about 300 pounds over. I figured my tongue weight was about 410 pounds, and thus the actual weight of the trailer (2003 17' SD w/ everything) was 3190.

So far I have managed to triage out about 150 pounds from the truck and the search continues.

I just thought I would share these weights with the group. I was also wondering how these figures squared with those of others who have gone through the weighing process.



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Old 05-02-2003, 05:24 PM   #2
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you did a great job

The slide in truck camper guys do this all the time with much the same result. It is a fact things get heavy quick. The F-150 while a nice truck is much lighter than the F250/F350 class truck.

One thing you might want to look at will be a set of air bags. While this does not change gvrw or anything like that it can get the truck level and will make the ride easier on suspension.

Just think you have a truck as a tow vehicle for this 17'. Just imagine what the numbers are on some of the smaller vehicles. While the fiberglass trailers are lighter and easier to tow than others fact is you still need a pretty good vehicle to really tow with a safety margin.



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Old 05-02-2003, 05:52 PM   #3
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Funny thing:

When I screw the jack down and let the Casita's weight come down on the hitch, the truck only drops about 3/4". Far as I know there are NO special springs on it, either.



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