On a slight tangent, I know somebody who's a retired employee of Michelin, Stoke.

He lives in the village we moved from 3 years ago, it's only 3 miles back up the road. I met this guy at a Christmas party and I can't remember how we came to realise but he attended the same school as me back in Ruislip, Middx. I was there '59 to '65 and IIRC he was a year or two later.

When you run a Bailey Phoenix 420 (Series 1 or Plus) weight becomes an almost all consuming issue.

I guess we all know the industry guidance that noseweight should be between 5% and 7% of the caravan's loaded weight. Well in our case that's roughly 60kg to 90kg. Unfortunately the empty noseweight of a 420 is just under 20kg. That means that to get to the bare minimum recommended noseweight it needs to be increased by 40kg.

The only things to the rear of the axle are a kitchen cupboard and the washroom with wardrobe. If you leave that unloaded you at least minimise any influence on noseweight. However loading the rest of the van as I would consider 'normal', the noseweight only increases to 30kg or thereabouts. So it needs to go up another 30kg at least.

The only place you can add items forward of the axle is the lounge area but you have to bear in mind that as a weight is moved closer to the axle it imparts less influence on the hitch and more on the axle. A weight stuck on the hitch will put all of its influence through that hitch, a weight over the axle will put all of it through the axle. It follows that a weight halfway between the two imparts half of its influence on the axle and half of it on the nose. In our van the front central chest is roughly halfway between hitch and axle. Therefore any weight placed on the chest will only impart half of it to the nose. In addition stuff loaded in the rest of the lounge will gradually impose less and less weight to the nose as it is placed nearer the axle.

This has resulted in the need to fill up the lounge for every trip with mounds of gear normally stashed in the car. In total about 60kg worth of stuff more than I would call 'normal' is there and we can only get the noseweight up to 55kg. Short of filling the Aquaroll and Wastemaster with water (not a sensible idea) or resorting to sandbags in the nose I've run out of stuff to fit in there. Happily after some 2,500 miles of towing the van seems content with 55kg, with no misbeaviour.

But all that additional stuff has meant that we waltzed past the allocated MTPLM, luckily Bailey fit a 1300kg axle on the 420 with its standard 1146kg MTPLM. So we upgraded and have a payload capacity of 271kg. With our 22.5kg battery and 35kg mover plus 168.5kg of payload we should tip the scales at 1268kg, some 32kg below our limit.

I would be surprised if a weighbridge showed us as being over limit with that sort of margin available.

Incidentally Bailey had one of their regular refreshes of the Phoenix range last autumn and among the changes to the 420 model they moved the battery box from just behind the axle where it would contribute to a light noseweight, to just to the rear of the front chest, as far forward as they could go with a battery box in the floor. I reckon that move, on its own, has probably increased the empty noseweight by 20kg and getting from 40kg to over 60kg will be much easier with that model now.

SDA I read on another ‘forum’ of an an owner with the same noseweight problem. They also towed with items normally in their car like awning, chairs, toolbox etc. They then emptied their wardrobe onto the benches and put towels ,shoes and kitchen cupboard tins , wine etc into collapsible boxes to put upfront when towing. Also put cutlery drawer on the bench too. After this they felt happier. A pain on leaving/arriving but peace of mind.

Quote: John Watson wrote in post #18

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SDA I read on another ‘forum’ of an an owner with the same noseweight problem. They also towed with items normally in their car like awning, chairs, toolbox etc. They then emptied their wardrobe onto the benches and put towels ,shoes and kitchen cupboard tins , wine etc into collapsible boxes to put upfront when towing. Also put cutlery drawer on the bench too. After this they felt happier. A pain on leaving/arriving but peace of mind.

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