Sunday, Jun 02, 2013 at 23:16
What I wrote applies to someone who has weighed down the back of their car with too much weight so they start changing the
suspension to compensate. That is when you can run into major problems with handling and reliability. If you change anything on a car, it will affect something else and it may not be for the better. If yours looks ok with your intended load then no problems, there is no need to worry about changing anything.
My handbook lists the maximum rear axle weight as 1570 kg and the front as 1180. That gives a total weight of 2750 but the insurance papers state the GVM is 2500 kg. That makes sense when you weigh the car. It comes in at 1610 kg stock standard with no accessories and a genuine Toyota aluminium tray. If you remove the tray it would be somewhere under 1500 kg. It is supposed to be a one ton ute so if you added around one ton (including the tray, driver and passengers and a full fuel tank) it would weigh 2500 kg.
The weight of my wife and I plus a tow bar and few other odds and ends takes the car up to around 1850 meaning I can put another 650 on the tray. I have only done that once on a short trip around town and the stock
suspension looked fine as I would expect seeing it has been designed to carry that weight. I have had it sitting on top of Big Red in the Simpson with an all up weight of 2390 and it performed perfectly. The shocks are stock and the factory fitted rears are still there and going
well. Tyres are stock 205 x 16 LT.
As for improving the weight carrying capacity: yes some people do that but the Outback repair centres make a lot of money fixing cracked or bent chassis, cracked diff housings, broken wheel studs and collapsed wheel bearings so that is up to you. My theory is if your car won't carry your intended load then buy one that will.
I hope this gives you some idea of how yours will go. Obviously a dual cab won't carry as much as a single out the back but it will take a lot more in the cabin. The axle loads and GVM are most likely the same.
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