Nose weight issues/concerns

Hi. I have a Swift Challenger Sport 564 and I tow with a Serento 2.5D XT. The max permitted weight on the tow bar is 120kg and the recommended (manufactures) nose weight of the caravan is 90kg.

I tow with a nose weight of 90kg and it tows comfortably with no problems but to achieve this nose weight I have put as little as possible in the front locker, ie only one cylinder and just bits and pieces, hoses, toilet fluid etc. If I take a spare cylinder I take it in the car as well as the awning, in order to keep the nose weight down.

This set up changes depending on the tow car, but I advise to keep the nose weight down to the recommended weight and to check the max weight permitted for your car/tow bar. I personally do not put any weight behind the axle to counter the nose weight as this can cause problems ie unsteadiness. 

Putting weight over the axle should not cause any problem, such as spare wheel, awning. You should be able to check the manufactures  max permitted nose weight on line.  Hope this helps

Broadside - thank you for your guidance. I will remove the spare gas cylinder and move the spare to over the axle, may even keep the spare in the car. 

Fine, but make sure you check the manufacturers recommendations for the nose weight and tow bar/car weight. Its sometimes a matter of trial and error.   Good luck and happy caravanning 

You are carrying a lot of gas, at least by my standards. Would it be possible to replace one cylinder with a small back-up cylinder in order to reduce the load?

We had a Bailey Valencia S1 and struggled to get the nose weight down to 100kg. The ex-factory nose weight was 86kg so you can see the problem. In later models they moved the gas bottles to the centre of the van which probably helps.

The only way we could get the weight down was to shift some heavy items to the back of the van. This is not ideal from a stability point of view but in our case it appeared to make little difference to towing stability.

I have never been overly concerned about moving heavy stuff towards the rear. My experience is the main thing is that the centre of gravity is forward of the axle and noseweight is correct.

I agree with EasyT. So long as you don't overdo things and load something like 100kg or more right at the back of the caravan the outfit should remain perfectly stable.

Thank you to everyone for the advice and guidance. I have decided to go to just one gas cylinder, may be a Calor Lite (although these seem quite difficult to source). The spare wheel will be securely loaded just over the axle. I think that I may have also taken the reading incorrectly, in the the caravan was on a slight slope - this may have resulted in an incorrect reading. I am also going to a local weigh bridge to check the overall weight of the unit.

Again - I do appreciate the guidance provided.

How much gas you need to carry depends largely on whether you will be using electric hook up all the time and how long you are away for. 

I am always on EHU and so use very little gas. A 3.9kg bottle would last me 80 nights. When I was only going away for 10 weeks I only carried the one bottle and would replace every Christmas. At £16 a refill I was not concerned if there was a couple of quids worth of gas left in the bottle at exchange. As I actually need the noseweight on present caravan and we are away 120 nights I carry two 3.9kg bottles. They are not a great deal different in weight to Calor lite when full. Calor Lite does seem to be more difficult to obtain refills for on a like for like basis. 

Glad I trawled the discussions as I am having same issue as SW123.

We've changed from a motorhome to a caravan (Elddis Affinity 530 with 4WD Tiguan for towing) and picked up the van with no gear in it apart from the leisure battery (stored forward of axle) and gas bottle in front locker; the spare wheel is hung just behind the axle. Motor mover (30kg) is in front of axle.

Van, car and towball limits are all 100kg while the 7% calculation comes out at 98kg. I checked nose weight (Milenco guage) and it came in near to 110. 

We don't yet have an awning but today I took all our other "stuff" (about 90kg) and placed it over the axle, avoiding rear washroom, and got weight down to 105kg.  I don't want to start removing battery and gas bottle for travelling, or place stuff in washroom as we are new to towing and want to keep outfit as stable as possible - but have we any other options?