Nose Weight

[pensioner]

I'm totally confused over this topic despite having read all the comments about it on here.
I originally thought you just put a gauge under the towhitch and wound up the jockey wheel untill it cleared the ground and took a reading,,100kg+,having done this I emptied the front locker of everything except the gas bottle,and put the awning and poles and spare wheel as far back inside the van as possible to reduce the reading.
This didn't strike me as being the right way and read all the comments on here about it 'till I went cross eyed and had a headache.
Next I measured the height of the hitch when on the car and it was 40cm so I then wound up the jockey wheel,put the gauge into the towball socket and lowered the hitch to 40cm and it was soo light it didn't even get to 50kg.
All I'm sure of is that the van should be level or very slightly nose down when towing and there should be a positive weight on the hitch.
Can you please advise me the correct way to measure the nose weight.

 

[colin-yorkshire]

hi, the simplist way and easiest I found was to use a pair of bathroom scales. and the caravan step.
first measure the hight of the middle of the tow ball on the car,
then set the van on level ground
take off the h/brake and chock the wheels
wind the jockey wheel up or down until the hitch is at the same hight as the tow ball
place step with b/scales on top and a piece of wood ect, if required to get the hight as near as possible
zero the scales
and wind up the jockey wheel until it rests on the scales and just clears the floor
take measurement from scales.
please note no method is 100% accurate but this was the nearest I got.