Weigh bridge blues

If I remember correctly you are allowed to be 5% overweight before plod takes any action.

Stevesie raises a potential solution to the weight issue for those with a 3.5t limit, where std 'light chassis' axle weights are commensurately lower....

just get your van on a 4.250 'heavy' chassis and downplate the total weight to 3500kg.

As above, this might eliminate the bugbear of the light chassis and a long overhang .... the poor limit on the rear axle 

If you were down plating because of licence restrictions surely overloading beyond 3.5 tons even if the chassis is capable is illegal.

peedee

If you were down plating because of licence restrictions surely overloading beyond 3.5 tons even if the chassis is capable is illegal.

peedee

you are, of course, correct, Peedee...and not explained at all well by me....sorry.

what i meant was that the 3500 chassis only has a rear (and legal) capacity of 2100kg.

with a MH with a long overhang, its easy to exceed this limit way before reaching a 3500kg total. i have my suspicions that this is happening with many vans on the road which run at 3500....possibly a few on CT.

by specifying the heavy 4250kg Fiat chassis, as on our van, the rear axle allowance is 2400kg.

you could then down plate the total weight to 3500kg yet still retain the legal capacity of 2400kg on the rear axle, thus negating the real potential to be seriously overweight on the rear axle if loading the light chassis to its max of 3500kg.

Maybe a cheaper option I dont know is to add air suspension to the light chassis as this allows you to uprate the rear axle weight.

not sure....the 'heavy' option is comparatively cheap to order...possibly less than air and would give a 300kg increase, again probably more than air might be able to do on the light chassis....then theres the possibility of a tyre change....the heavy chassis will already come with larger wheels/tyres..

and both options would require someone like SVTech to get involved at around £300.. 

True BB only downside is if the converter normally uses light chassis's then it may be a special order for the heavy which may result in delays.

I think ours is the heavy chassis but only rated up to 3,850, is it the ALKO chassis that gives the higher levels?

without looking at the weight plates i couldnt tell...

if youre right, there should be a Fiat plate showing 4250kg (the 'heavy' part, the front axle remains)

then AL-Ko add a chassis in lieu of the Fiat one,on ours this re-rates the vehicle to 4000kg....

then the converter will add a third plate (ours will be a Carthago plate at 4250kg) yours will be a Knaus one, which might be all the way down to 3850kg...

however, as there is no license difference between 4250 and down to 3850, why would the converter bother? if you can drive 3850, you can drive 4250.

so, more likely, that you are on the light chassis and have been uprated to 3850.

again, only the plates can tell you this.

if this were the case, you would have a 3500kg plate from Fiat, another from AL-Ko (which may be at 3850)....or even different and third one from Knaus.

its all about the plates

Last time I weighed our van, we were 80kg over the MTPLM - oops!!!

I then spent a fair bit of time looking around online for legality of MTPLM and I'm not sure that it has any real standing??? Please correct me if I'm wrong but definitive information was hard to find.

The legal limits seemed very much to be defined by gross train weight

Last time I weighed our van, we were 80kg over the MTPLM - oops!!!

I then spent a fair bit of time looking around online for legality of MTPLM and I'm not sure that it has any real standing??? Please correct me if I'm wrong but definitive information was hard to find.

The legal limits seemed very much to be defined by gross train weight

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