Comparison Test

To give you an idea of how you’re easy it is to overload your vehicle, we have chosen two popular 4x4s – Toyota 200 Series Land Cruiser and the Ford Ranger – and added typical touring 4WD accessories. Let’s see how they stack up.

LET’S START LOADING THEM UP:

As you can see in the tables above, the Land Cruiser is already overweight before you even start to pack the essentials, or even passengers. The Ranger hasn’t got much load capacity left either.

TOWING
If you didn’t think it was complicated enough; there are further considerations when towing. Again, we’ll use the Land Cruiser as an example. If you add the maximum braked towing weight (3500kg) and the GVM (3350kg) together you get 6850kg, which happens to be the GCM (Gross Combined Mass). So at GVM, you’re able to tow the 4WD’s full rating of 3500kg. However, that’s not always the case.

Now, let’s do the sums on the Ranger. Just like the Land Cruiser, it has a braked towing capacity of 3500kg. With a GVM of 3200kg, it gives you a total weight of 6700kg. This is 700kg in excess of the Rangers GCM of 6000kg. So you’ll need to strip weight out of the vehicle or tow something lighter.

The Tow Ball Mass (TBM) also affects you GVM. When you’re towing 3500kg, with either the Ranger or the Toyota, if you’re Tow Ball Mass is 350kg (10%) of your van, you can add that weight directly onto the 4WD’s GVM.

GVM UPGRADES
BEFORE you give up and throw the keys in the bin; there is salvation in the form of a GVM upgrade. In the case of the Land Cruiser, you can install an upgrade that will lift the GVM from 3350kg to 3800kg, giving you a massive payload increase of 450kg.
The Ford Ranger GVM upgrade will get you from 3200kg up to 3500KG.