Motorhome too heavy

Tom and Aisha said:
Spot on .... the answer is for us both to visit weight-watchers !!
But, need to use the van this year and willpower is somewhat lacking.
The van is a 2017 Dethleffs Globebus T7, rated at 3500kg, and with a stated payload of 500kg. However, by the time we take off the weight-watchers candidates, plus the spare we've added, plus table/chairs etc and plus some water for traveling between un-serviced Aires in France, not much left for beer and wine
Am sure the up-rate is the way to go as much of the fun disappears without being able to take the kitchen sinks etc.
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We have the same van, I haven’t seen another one on the road only the T6 so nice to know we are not the only ones. We have added rear air suspension, carry 2 electric bikes, inflatable kayak, which has to travel under the table as garage restricted to 150 kg and so many clothes and shoes food etc and we are just on 3,500 with water and fuel so I am surprised you are over, we have even fitted a spare wheel underneath. We went to the weigh bridge and we weigh anything extra we put in.
 
Burgo said:
Not wishing to thread high jack, but does your 12v switch on your control panel turn off any 12 v circuits? All ours does us turn off the panel and nothing else!
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Everything apart from fridge , even solar panel off, oh and step stays on as well as the fridge
 
pandas said:
This is from an SVtech published document.
If your licence restricts your vehicle weight. (i.e. Licence after 1997 with B category only, or over 70 without medical.) and you are found to be exceeding your vehicle weight, the offence commit is two- fold, a vehicle overload and a driver licencing issue.
The later offence being far more serious, as this will carry penalty points in addition to a fine.
Where a driver is exceeding his driving licence entitlement, it is treated the same as driving a vehicle without the appropriate licence i.e. Driving without a licence.
This carries a 3 to 6 penalty points endorsements and up to £1000 fine.
In addition to this, the police can pursue the offence of your insurance being invalidated. This would be through contact with your insurer and if your car insurance is deemed invalid, this will result in an extra 6 to 8 penalty points placed on your licence (on top of the 3 to 6 for driving without a licence) plus an increased fine.
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Please remind me what SV Tech are selling.
Let’s use some common sense about this subject, it’s widely reported that many Motorhomes are overweight, some estimates put the figure at 80% although that seems way high to me. Accidents obviously happen involving motorhomes but have you any evidence of an insurance company not meeting a claim because of a weight issue with a private vehicle ?
 
Crazylegs said:
Please remind me what SV Tech are selling.
Let’s use some common sense about this subject, it’s widely reported that many Motorhomes are overweight, some estimates put the figure at 80% although that seems way high to me. Accidents obviously happen involving motorhomes but have you any evidence of an insurance company not meeting a claim because of a weight issue with a private vehicle ?
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I believe the common sense view should be not to overload a motorhome more than the specified weight allowance then you are less likely to put other road users at risk. Now you mention what service SVtech are in, of course insurance companies are quite willing to overlook vehicle claims were they for example racing, hiring out without informing them, driving without a license and possibly being over the legal specified weight? Really bored with this subject now. Drive safe and responsibly.

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I just did mine... sv tech 300 quid easy pessy... why would u not do it if u can.... worst case is u need the medical... well whats the harm in getting yourself checked out at 70

drive safe

Stu
 
I could be wrong but I was under the impression, if you break the law (road traffic act) your insurance becomes void (had that off an insurance assessor after a motorcycle accident. first thing he looked for was the road tax, second was the MOT, then checked the bike was legal tyres, exhaust etc). If you go over your stated weight on the V5 YOU HAVE BROKEN THE LAW. Truckers are no exception either, they have to be weight, less the driver i.e driver equals 120kg a 44 tonne artic has to be 43,880kg. So our weighbridge operator tells me!
 
WESTY66 said:
I could be wrong but I was under the impression, if you break the law (road traffic act) your insurance becomes void (had that off an insurance assessor after a motorcycle accident. first thing he looked for was the road tax, second was the MOT, then checked the bike was legal tyres, exhaust etc). If you go over your stated weight on the V5 YOU HAVE BROKEN THE LAW. Truckers are no exception either, they have to be weight, less the driver i.e driver equals 120kg a 44 tonne artic has to be 43,880kg. So our weighbridge operator tells me!
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If he was working for the insurance company he would have been described as an 'insurance adjuster'

'Insurance assessors' represent the insured, to ensure that the the claim is settled correctly. They are usually only used in expensive claims.

Geoff
 
The upgrade to 3850kg is €279 Inc IVA on the Dethleffs accessories pdf (attached) . Our dealer says it can be done at any time as its a paper exercise. The 4350kg maxi chasis would be €1800 (but suspect that would have to be ordered on a new build) .

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Attachments

nicholsong said:
If he was working for the insurance company he would have been described as an 'insurance adjuster'

'Insurance assessors' represent the insured, to ensure that the the claim is settled correctly. They are usually only used in expensive claims.

Geoff
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Thanks for that Geoff, every days a school day. In my defence he did say he'd come to ASSESS the bike, not ADJUST it;)(y)(y)
 
pandas said:
This is from an SVtech published document.
If your licence restricts your vehicle weight. (i.e. Licence after 1997 with B category only, or over 70 without medical.) and you are found to be exceeding your vehicle weight, the offence commit is two- fold, a vehicle overload and a driver licencing issue.
The later offence being far more serious, as this will carry penalty points in addition to a fine.
Where a driver is exceeding his driving licence entitlement, it is treated the same as driving a vehicle without the appropriate licence i.e. Driving without a licence.
This carries a 3 to 6 penalty points endorsements and up to £1000 fine.
In addition to this, the police can pursue the offence of your insurance being invalidated. This would be through contact with your insurer and if your car insurance is deemed invalid, this will result in an extra 6 to 8 penalty points placed on your licence (on top of the 3 to 6 for driving without a licence) plus an increased fine.
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no vested interrest there then
 
How does a vehicle rated at present at 4200kgs get downrated to 3500kgs, become a different vehicle, it is a paperweork exercise by bureaucrats trying to justify themselve, The UK is well known for gold plating rules from the EU and instead of an A4 sheet, ends up , once the treasury solicitors have done, a book of forty pages of crossed T's and dotted I's.. How can it possibly be legal one moment and not the other. Same vehicle same driver, but a rule in between. How can a downplated van be deemed totally unsafe at a bit over 3500kgs when two days previous it was 4200kgs but the Tyres, chassis, brakes, etc., are all quite adequate and still the same bits as before. The rules could be changed to separate professional drivers with 40 tonner, driving 6 days a week all yearlong. against a recreational one at 3500kgs. just going around on occasional trips. And there is the matter of having to pay more money to do less and still with the same vehicle. The builders of the damn things know that their vehicle are going to be overweight whatever the pu down.
 
pandas said:
the police can pursue the offence of your insurance being invalidated. This would be through contact with your insurer and if your car insurance is deemed invalid, this will result in an extra 6 to 8 penalty points placed on your licence (on top of the 3 to 6 for driving without a licence) plus an increased fine.
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Regardless of what the police say you can never have "no insurance" the law is ,& always has been, that 3rd parties are covered by your insurance company regardless of what you have done. There fore you have insurance to cover all & any claim. It is then up to your insurance company to sue you civilly for the reyrun of any pay out.
There is no requirement for you to have insurance to cover repairs to your own vehicle.
This is why I can never understand why any who is7Was insured ever pleads guilty to having " no insurance"
WESTY66 said:
I could be wrong but I was under the impression, if you break the law (road traffic act) your insurance becomes void (had that off an insurance assessor after a motorcycle accident. first thing he looked for was the road tax, second was the MOT, then checked the bike was legal tyres, exhaust etc). If you go over your stated weight on the V5 YOU HAVE BROKEN THE LAW. Truckers are no exception either, they have to be weight, less the driver i.e driver equals 120kg a 44 tonne artic has to be 43,880kg. So our weighbridge operator tells me!
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As above he was talking *****cks-They have to pay all the 3rd parties then sue you ,if they want, for the money.
 
Just as an aside & slightly off topic but I was looking at vans the other night & clicked on an Mercedes sprinter ,with insulated freezer body &refrigeration equipment, by accident. Noticing that it was a 518 & so could theoretically be up to around 4 tonnes I was amazed to see it shown as 3500kgs? I read the advert & one of the photos showed the technical logbook .
It had a tare of 3195 kgs ,giving a load weight of 305kgs without the driver.
I enquired as to what it used to carry & average weight to be told around 1500kgs, daily.:eek: So for 12 years & 226,000kms this has been running around overloaded just so it can be run on a 'B' licence.

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So I've given up worrying :LOL:

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arto stu said:
I just did mine... sv tech 300 quid easy pessy... why would u not do it if u can.... worst case is u need the medical... well whats the harm in getting yourself checked out at 70

drive safe

Stu
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Is that plus VAT?
 
I thought most people on here knew that SV tech was the dearer cousin of the other bloke that does it for £150, I am sure some of you will know who I am talking about, but I cant remember having read this entire thread.
Les
 
Give these people a ring, very helpful and I believe not as expensive as SV.
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PP Bear said:
Give these people a ring, very helpful and I believe not as expensive as SV.
View attachment 281028
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£142.0 was what he charged me to uprate from 3500kg to 3760kg, without any change of tyres etc; That was an Alko Chassis.

I have suggested many times, that it is time that MOTORHOMES became a separate Category. And with a much more realistic limit on B1 use of (say) 4t. 90% of 3500kg `vans built today have Unrealistic pay loads. but once purchased that is the Owners issue not the Manufacturer, unless someone has the funds to make a case for "unfit for purpose" in the Courts!, this will remain an issue. I am convinced that "Mr and Mrs Average" need at least 500kg of payload as a minimum.
 
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Minxy Girl said:
That's my thought too as last time I heard it was £360 in total.
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I wonder why so many people use SVTech @ £360 when you can achieve the same outcome for £150.

I'll give JRC a call this week as I'm not in the habit of throwing money away.
 
Blue Knight said:
I wonder why so many people use SVTech @ £360 when you can achieve the same outcome for £150.

I'll give JRC a call this week as I'm not in the habit of throwing money away.
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I think you can probably do it yourself, even cheaper, obviously you would have to do some investigation and find out how. At a previous employment in the haulage business the fitters used to upplate/ downplate horseboxes according to what driving license the vehicle owners had. EG. Sometimes a 10 tonne Horsebox was purchased by a someone with an older style car license which restricted the vehicle they could drive to 7.5 tonnes.
IIRC Bolt on some smaller wheels fill out some forms at the dvsa depot and away you go.

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PeteH said:
I have suggested many times, that it is time that MOTORHOMES became a separate Category. And with a much more realistic limit on B1 use of (say) 4t. 90% of 3500kg `vans built today have Unrealistic pay loads. but once purchased that is the Owners issue not the Manufacturer, unless someone has the funds to make a case for "unfit for purpose" in the Courts!, this will remain an issue. I am convinced that "Mr and Mrs Average" need at least 500kg of payload as a minimum.
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@PeteH I am afraid that if this was to happen then the manufacturers would simply use different materials or add more to the vehicles and the weight situation would remain the same!
 
Crazylegs said:
I think you can probably do it yourself, even cheaper, obviously you would have to do some investigation and find out how. At a previous employment in the haulage business the fitters used to upplate/ downplate horseboxes according to what driving license the vehicle owners had. EG. Sometimes a 10 tonne Horsebox was purchased by a someone with an older style car license which restricted the vehicle they could drive to 7.5 tonnes.
IIRC Bolt on some smaller wheels fill out some forms at the dvsa depot and away you go.
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I'm afraid you can't do it yourself, I looked into it in great detail when I wanted to uprate our previous Globecar, speaking to many people at DVSA, DVLA etc and they MUST have an engineers report to confirm that the vehicle in question is capable of being used at the higher weight safely. A horsebox that had previously been registered at a higher weight could probably be up and down plated as you suggest but one that has never been uprated I suspect wouldn't be able to be without and engineers confirmation.
 
gus-lopez said:
Just as an aside & slightly off topic but I was looking at vans the other night & clicked on an Mercedes sprinter ,with insulated freezer body &refrigeration equipment, by accident. Noticing that it was a 518 & so could theoretically be up to around 4 tonnes I was amazed to see it shown as 3500kgs? I read the advert & one of the photos showed the technical logbook .
It had a tare of 3195 kgs ,giving a load weight of 305kgs without the driver.
I enquired as to what it used to carry & average weight to be told around 1500kgs, daily.:eek: So for 12 years & 226,000kms this has been running around overloaded just so it can be run on a 'B' licence.

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Broken Link Removed

So I've given up worrying :LOL:
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My hymer was rated at 3500kg when I bought it in October despite all the plates on the van saying 3900kg when I contacted dvla to get it sorted they told me it's been 3500kg since first registration.
I can say that I'm currently on the 3900kg when loaded and I think it would be impossible to run this van at 3500kg so it's probably been running around 14years and 95000 miles overweight
 
Blue Knight said:
I wonder why so many people use SVTech @ £360 when you can achieve the same outcome for £150.
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Its because they are the people that everyone said to go to, so they had the 'monopoly', however I did a lot of research to find JR who had only given his details to, and was approved by, the DVSA shortly before I contacted them for advice so he simply wasn't known about, there is more details in another thread on uprating if you're interested in my 'detective work'!

https://www.motorhomefun.co.uk/foru...one-done-it-themselves-not-via-svtech.108656/

John's info on here:

https://www.motorhomefun.co.uk/foru...ating-our-rapido-a-class.130317/#post-1855686

MikeD said:
I hope you have a good outcome with JRC. Not everybody has had. Sometimes, for some people, cheap is not good.

https://www.motorhomefun.co.uk/forum/threads/up-rating-the-hard-way.153577/
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Gee, some people just can't let the past go can they ... that was over 2 years ago! :rolleyes:

As Andrew has a standard PVC on the maxi heavy chassis he just needs to supply John with the info and there shouldn't be a problem.
 
@Blue Knight

Andrew, below is the email I sent to John when I uprated our FamilyScout along with the documents/photos he needed, if you do this you shouldn't have any problems at all, feel free to copy it.

Note that I only asked for 4250kg but you should be able to go to 4500kg (total of both axles) if you want but it would be impossible to get the camper loaded exactly at that so I wasn't bothered.

Dear John

Further to my husband's (Chris) conversation with you today below are details of our camper which we wish to uprate from it's current MAM of 3500kg to 4250kg which we believe the vehicle in its current form is capable of being changed to without modification (the converter's COC shows that the weights are unchanged from the original vehicle supplied to them):

Reg No: FX15 RRZ (registered 7 May 2015)
VIN No: ZFA2500000*******
Vehicle: Fiat Ducato X250 Maxi 150 XLWB
Model Name: Globecar FamilyScout L (part of the Dethleffs group)​

The weights shown on both the Fiat and Dethleffs (converter) VINs are:

MTPLM: 3500kg (to uprate to 4250kg)
Train: 6500kg (no change required)
Front Axle: 2100kg (no change required)
Rear Axle: 2400kg (no change required)​

I attach the following information in Word document:
  1. Copy of V5C
  2. Dethleffs (Globecar) Certificate of Conformity
  3. Photos of Fiat and Dethleffs VIN Plates & Photo of camper (showing registration number)
  4. Photos of base vehicle ID, logos and tyre details
Please let me know if you need any more information.

Kind regards

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