Does the Ram 1500 cut it? Caravan weigh day for our big lap setup

We throw back to before we left on our big lap, when we had our whole setup weighed. We wanted to make sure that we were within all the legal weight limits before we took off on our trip to caravan around Australia.

Does the Ram 1500 make it easy to be within all the weight limits? We were confident that we would be within the limit for Gross Combined Mass (GCM), but after packing the van and caravan we weren't too confident about the Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM) and the Aggregate Trailer Mass (ATM).

To rectify the issues we had to remove a number of items form the car and the caravan. To give you an idea we had a 45L ARB fridge in the tray which included some food in it, a fold out kids table, max trax, recovery gear, tools, 2x 20L of unleaded fuel, a few bags of toys and other miscellaneous items. We also had a battery box with a 100Ah lithium battery in there. The battery and one full 20L Jerry can was all that remained in the tray. We moved a number of items to the caravan and left some items out all together (such as the fridge and the table). We also moved a number of items into the storage tubs in the floor at the rear of the cab to try and move weight forward to the front axles. We even removed the kick step at the rear of the tray.

We had our setup weighed by Ric at VanWeigh who is situated in Perth. If you would like to have them weigh your setup, you can get a hold of him at https://VanWeigh.com.au.

For those who would like to know the specifics with regards to what our setup weighed before and after the changes, the details are below.

Legal Limits for our vehicle:
GVM: 3450
GCM: 7713
Front Axle:1860
Rear Axle: 1860
Tow Ball Mass: 350 (restricted by hitch)
Braked Towing Capacity: 3500 (restricted by hitch)

GTM: 3150
ATM: 3500

First weigh in:
GVM: 3604 (154 over)
GCM: 7016 (697 under)
Vehicle front axle: 1639 (221 under)
Vehicle rear axle: 1965 (105 over)
Tow ball mass: 293 (57 under)
Braked towing capacity: 3705 (205 over)(restricted by DO35 other wise would be 4500)

Caravan GTM: 3412 (262 over)
ATM: 3705 (205 over)


Second weigh in:
GVM: 3440 (10 under)
GCM: 6568 (1145 under)
Front Axle: 1636 (224 under)
Rear Axle: 1804 (56 under)
Tow ball mass: 310 (40 under)
Braked towing capacity: 3438 (62 under)

Caravan GTM: 3128 (22 under)
ATM: 3438 (62 under)

Gear we use:
Insta 360 X3 (360 camera) - https://www.insta360.com/sal/x3?insrc...
Canon EOS R6 - https://amzn.to/3zJaqf8
Canon 16-35mm f4 - https://amzn.to/3T9bks6
Canon 24-70mm f2.8 USM - https://amzn.to/3NHmVOc
Canon 100mm f2.8 IS USM Macro - https://amzn.to/3DAVnVW
Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS USM - https://amzn.to/3h0KbKy
Canon EF-EOSR Mount Adapter - https://amzn.to/3NCvx8s
DJI Mavic Air (No longer available, link to mini 3 pro) - https://click.dji.com/AG5sAQsaSIanvUw...

Our music is from Audiio, if you want great music for your videos check out their plans here: https://audiio.com/partner?oid=1&affi...

Use code PRO70 to get 70% off the pro subscription. That $59.70 (USD) down from $199 (USD) for annual subscription.

The above links are affiliate links and we receive small commission when you use them. They don’t cost you any extra and it helps us continue to make content for you guys so it’s much appreciated.