How much do we weigh (not getting personal here)?

Continuing with yesterday's post, here is another post we shared with the IRV2 community.  This time on how much the motorhome weighs.  We wanted to make sure we weren't overweight for safety sake (the motorhome anyway, I wish it was that easy to remove pounds on ourselves!).

Here is the post...

Our Lego Motorhome on the dash during the drive back!

This is the 2nd in a 4 part series of our impressions of our new home.  If you missed it, here is the link to the first part on the "driving" portion as we made our way back to WA from MI...

http://www.irv2.com/forums/f103/2017-newmar-bay-star-3009-trip-report-driving-307980.html

This is Part 2 which is on the weights before and after we loaded our stuff...


Before we signed the final papers, we asked that the coach be loaded with full fluids and during our test drive we stopped at a scale to weigh front/back, right/left, and full coach.  Because the front axle could only take 8k pounds, we wanted to make sure we'd have room for our (not light) bodies plus our stuff and future occasional passengers.  By having full fluids, we'd have our worst case scenario for boondocking and we'd know how the fluids were distributed weight-wise before we began loading.

Because the scale wasn't set up for "proper" weighing, we are focusing on total weight mostly at this point.  But the front/back was a major consideration and we hope the scales were accurate enough for that.

BEFORE loading our stuff but with full fluids and our bodies sitting up front...

Total available weight:  22,000
Total weight:  19,760
Cargo availability:  2,240

So this passed our first test - we wanted 2k for our stuff.  The starting CCC in the brochure from Newmar before water and options was 4,500.  CCC posted in the motorhome with the options we chose was 3,185 but doesn't count the over 600 lbs of water.

The front weight was on the scales was 7,680 out of 8,000 available and the back was 12,080 out of 15,000.  So, the question was how would our cargo impact the front vs. back weight.  The fridge/kitchen, where many heavy things will be loaded, was in the middle so that weight would be distributed to both front and back but mostly back since it was closer to the back tires.  The pass-through was in the back so anything heavy there would help offset the load on the front but we didn't plan on putting heavy things back there.

There is quite a bit of storage toward the front, both inside and out but we basically decided to trust that we could move things around and make it work.   We are waiting until we can do a 4 corner weigh (Escapade next spring?) to redistribute weight right to left and fine tune front to back if needed.

AFTER loading our stuff...

We were nervous about the weight so after we loaded almost all of our stuff we decided to weigh it to see where we were so we'd know if we needed to take some things out and start weighing as we loaded the rest!

Available weight:  22,000
Total weight (again with us and full fluids):  21,190
Remaining CCC for our stuff and passengers:  810

Whew!  So we loaded about 1,430 pounds so far.  We have heavy travel books, cookbooks, a ladder and a few smaller things to sort through and load but in a nutshell, we don't have a lot of room for those things so that will keep our weight in check.  In many of the motorhomes we'd looked at, they had a ton of storage but the CCC wouldn't support using it.  So this is perfect - if it fits, the CCC will probably be fine!!

As far as front to back, we're not sure how much to trust the scales since it didn't weigh each axle separately (we drove on halfway and weighed "the front").  The front showed approximately 7850 (compared to 7680 without our stuff).  That leaves 150 pounds of direct front axle weight if we have full tanks.  So of everything we loaded (1,430 pounds) only 200 lbs were added to the front(?).  That seems low but again it's hard to know how the weight will be distributed front to back with things in the very back relieving pressure on the front.  We deliberately did not store heavy pantry stuff toward the front but instead put office supplies, keyboard, coats, games, light kitchen stuff toward the front.

So not ideal in the front (seems close) and definitely a compromise in going with a shorter gas coach.  Works for the two of us but we'll want to look at it with more accurate scales to know how many other passengers we might be able to carry safely.  I know some folks say to not worry about the weights so much but we'd like to try and stay within the recommended max capacity!

Please feel free to make helpful comments based on what we've reported so far.  We love hearing different perspectives!

Ellen