collected new bailey ranger, dutifully used my noseweight gauge to check as started to pack it, noticed it was 120kg before starting (gas bottle and battery already in situ), is this right, is the gauge wrong, i presumed it would be fairly low to start with or do you have to pack at the back initially to overcome this.
This is what we had with our bailey when we first picked it up. After a lot of head scratching someone on the forum pointed out we may be measuring at a lower height than our towbar. We find with a noseweight guage it needs to be put on a block of wood to raise the height to that of our towbar and then put the van on it to measure. Ours went down by about 30kg so quite a difference!! The noseweight sticks are actually fairly short.
the caravan should be level or at towball height to get a correct reading.the spare tyre is in our front box,this weighs 19 kgs on its own.we have a bailey ranger.now only carry one gas bottle for this reason,still high but i can use 90 kgs on the towball as its rated at 92 kgs.
------------- the only silly question is the one you do not ask.
I should add, that once I sorted the pounds/kilos thing out, the reading was around 70Kg which is perfect for our van.
Mind you, we don't keep the spare wheel in the front locker - it goes on an underslung carrier behind the caravan axle. Also, this is with one 5Kg BP Gaslight bottle in the front.
The awning wedges really nicely just behind the axle, in the side dinette, and we keep aquaroll and wastemaster in the end bathroom, although they're not heavy anyway.
If you still get problems then on our Bailey the centre table/drawer unit removes and fits into the gap in the side dinette (over the axle). This is the most heavy item at the front of our van bar the gas bottle.
Normally we leave it in place and do the following.
The aqua roll and waste go in the end bathroom. The rest all over the axle with the EHU slightly behind. This gives us 75kg (max for our car). Basically totally unloaded our van is pretty nose heavy, if buying new I think I would always go for a u seat at the front rather than one of these table/drawers in the middle.