Kerb weights - Help!!!!!!!

[tony_5104319]

Hi There,

Does anybody know how the kerb weight of a car is worked out?. It seems that different manufactures do it differently. VW use car 1 person and a tank of fuel, however Hyundai quote car 4 passengers, luggage and a tank of fuel. This could add 200kg+ to the kerb weight.. The caravan club say it is the car + a tank of fuel.

I know that you won't know what the true weight is until you get the car on a weigh bridge, but there must be a way of finding out before you buy.

Help I am about to put pen to paper and don't want to make a costly mistake

 

[jacky3]

kerbweight is usually as far as i know(lutz will give you a better idea)

the car with all fluids(water oil etc) and tank 90% full(no passengers)in some cases you can acheive extra kerbweight if there are add on accessories(ie bull bars etc for 4x4) my terrano has a kerbweight of 1760,but if i purchase the few accessories there are and fit them to car i think it puts the kerweight to around 1800 whetther this is a legal kerbweight im not certain,maybe lutz can give me the correct interpretation

 

[rob_jax]

Hi,

European vehicle manufacturers follow European Directive 95/48/EC which specifies the kerb weight as a car in ready to drive condition with the fuel tank 90% full, a driver on board weighing 68 kg and luggage of 7 kg.

Other manufacturers (outside Europe) may choose to define kerb weight in different ways.

And the actual kerb weight (which affects the usable part of the gross train weight - and your towing limits) depends on what options or accessories are fitted to your car.

Probably the best thing to do is to speak with the manufacturer's technical department - the sales person in the local dealership (very probably) won't know anything about towing and kerb weights.

Robert

 

[tony_5104319]

Hi,

European vehicle manufacturers follow European Directive 95/48/EC which specifies the kerb weight as a car in ready to drive condition with the fuel tank 90% full, a driver on board weighing 68 kg and luggage of 7 kg.

Other manufacturers (outside Europe) may choose to define kerb weight in different ways.

And the actual kerb weight (which affects the usable part of the gross train weight - and your towing limits) depends on what options or accessories are fitted to your car.

Probably the best thing to do is to speak with the manufacturer's technical department - the sales person in the local dealership (very probably) won't know anything about towing and kerb weights.

Robert

Thanks guys,

Your understanding is the same as mine.

The new santa Fe's Kerb weight is 1863kg but it includes 4 passangers with luggage and a tank of fuel, therefore if you take it that each person is 68KG and bags @ 7kg the true Kerb weight may be 1652KG or lower.

To note that the caravan club have not weighed this car and are giving the manufactures Kerb weight.............

 

[Lutz]

Published figures for kerbweight, even those quoted by the manufacturers, are usually notoriously inaccurate but always on the conservative side. They therefore only serve as a guideline. Actual kerbweight can be considerably higher due, as Rob says, to options and accessories fitted to the vehicle but which are not accounted for in the data. One can expect actual figures to be anything up to about 150kg higher than what the brochures say.

 

[Lutz]

Actually, in an attempt to avoid confusion of definition, the term 'kerbweight' has officially been replaced in the EU by mass in running order (MIRO) but only the caravan manufacturers seem to be using it. MIRO is what Rob is referring to under EU Directive 95/48/EC. However, the car makers' brochures and the public still refer to kerbweight so the confusion continues.

 

[tony_5104319]

Hi Lutz,

Ref to your question 'where did I get the 4 people from'

I spoke to their customer services dept who passed my question to the technical department . that was the reply. I asked if they could check as they have now lost a sale and they assured me that this was the way their kerb weight is measured.

 

[Lutz]

If that's what they told you, OK, but it doesn't make sense to me. Somehow I get the feeling that whoever spoke to you didn't know what he was talking about as it is so illogical.

 

[tony_5104319]

That's why I asked them to double check. The sales guy at the dealer will be pi**ed off tomorrow as this one of my primary concerns from the start. BTW cant fault the dealer.

 

[Lutz]

That's why I asked them to double check. The sales guy at the dealer will be pi**ed off tomorrow as this one of my primary concerns from the start. BTW cant fault the dealer.

Excuse my curiosity but why are you so concerned about the definition of kerbweight? As I mentioned earlier, you are never going to get an accurate figure without weighing the actual car, even if you finally come to a common understanding of what it includes. The only reason I can think of where it could be really important is to determine the payload that you can put into the car.

 

[Lutz]

Something has just occurred to me. Some car manufacturers work on the basis of 4 passengers as their standard load for test purposes and it may be that this is what your informant was thinking about. But this has nothing to do with kerbweight.

But, as I said, for all practical purposes other than to determine the available payload, there is no real need to know the kerbweight that accurately. Even a 100kg error on a car with a kerbweight of, say, 1500kg, is only going to change the weight ratio by 5% and that's unlikely to break the camel's back.

 

[tony_5104319]

Hi there

I will be towing a 1700kg MPTLM caravan with the car and would like to stay as close to the suggested 85% balance as possible. I have two children, one two year old and one 2 month old so would like to be safe. With this in mind and the kerb weight of the car I could go over the 100% mark (which technically is possible, however from a safety point of view at 60mph on a motorway does not float my boat).

 

[Lutz]

If you really want to stay at or below 85% when towing a 1700kg caravan, then the kerbweight of the car would have to be at least 2000kg. I think it would be fair to say that the Santa Fe is not that heavy no matter how kerbweight is defined. My data tells me that the kerbweight of the new Santa Fe is around 1850kg which would be 92%. But even that figure is likely to be on the conservative side as I've never come across an actual figure that's as low as a published one.