As you say, the best place to start is at the design stage. It gets harder after that, but gains can still be made.
The first "trick" is to put a price on weight.
How much would you be prepared to pay if someone said they could take out 100kg? $2,000? That would mean $20 per kg. That would be a conservative place to start, but the higher the price, the more gains you can make.
Then look at everything you can and ask if there is a lighter version (or better still if you can leave it behind).
Example... Margaret likes to read. I bought her a Kindle. It easily pays for itself @ $20 per kg.
No glass permitted. My scotch is decanted into PET bottles. We have a collection of plastic screw top containers for food from olives to jam that they all get re-packed into. When we go into a town and do a big shop-up, the re-packing happens in the supermarket car park and all the surplus packaging goes into their bin.
Check out the cutlery and the dinner set. We have plastic wine & scotch glasses. Stainless steel can often be more durable and lighter than other options.
Tools are a big issue for me. I found a stilson with an aluminium handle. Try to ensure that everything has more than one use.
Solar is lighter than generator plus fuel.
We can carry lots of fuel and water. Try not to carry more than you need for the next part of the journey.
Cheers,
Peter

Your type of travel would be a starting point; for instance, if you're touring - do you need all the awning accessories, mats, screens, etc? If you camp in one place for your entire time on the road, or move from caravan park to caravan park?
What type of cooking do you want, BBQ, camp oven, baking, open fire, etc?
What tools do you really need, axes, chainsaw, spanner sets, mallets and hammers, power drill and grinder? This depends a lot on where do you travel, outback (where you need to be able to fix everything your self) or, near town needing only small screwdriver pliers and shifter? Or just gaffer tape and WD40. Climate and time of year dictates whether you need air-conditioner (power supply requirements generator/fuel, or park mains). Climate dictates clothing and bedding requirements as well.
Leisure and activities Books, Wine cellar and cartons of beer'.

Plan your itinerary then only pack to suit obvious needs - As Peter said only carry what you need for your journey.

We travel with Dry goods in pantry, only carry enough water to next supply (spare 20L keg in tug - Basic tools + generator (in tug) - Hard to get child bride to eliminate books and wine (but I'm working on it).

Mrs packs everything YOU need . You pack everything the Mrs needs ?? Lol
Good luck .

iana wrote:

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It would make a really constructive thread, if we all put in ideas about reducing the weight of our rig, rather than going on about what we should have done. We need persons to contribute and ask, rather than feel bullied by some who just what to prove how knowledgeable they are to each other.

So what about some ideas of what we can do, to lesson the weights, now that we have already purchased the rig and cannot turn back the clock.

---

 Having built 2 lightweight vans one 11ft, tare 450kg and our new one 16x7ft at 730kg tare 998kg atm. I've spent endless hours investigating lightweight materials and accessories.

We installed plastic cupboards at 8 kg each x 3 plus plastic wardrobe at 16kg. Plastic items are better quality now. Imagine the chipboard weight you'd save. Lightweight ply from Lilydale stained and varnished for bench top and floor.

Polystyrene 36mm thick for walls and ceilings for the whole van weighed 10kg only. Paint a hardener, foamcoat and more weight saved with no internal cladding needed. Slotted angle from bunnings is light and strong used for bed frames and bracing and its powder coated. PVC tongue and groove boards for the shower.

So serious weight reduction can be made but pulling apart your van isnt ideal. Ideas are restricted like one 4kg lpg cylinder instead of 9kg saves 12kg. Use the 4 kg for spare. Lithium battery save 15kg+. Take some water in the car. Remove grey water tank and only camp where not needed, screw on jockey wheel so it rides in the car, rooftop aircon weighs 45kg replace it with a 22kg room portable unit under cupboards, 12v drawer fridge under bed is only 18kg (dometic, engel), we use a 17litre collapsible bucket, plunger pump sink tap eliminates 12v pump, our bunnings gravity chairs are very light and the most comfortable we've owned $54 each, oven? If we want a roast we buy a pub meal or use the weber- we bought a Lido junior 2 burner and grill at 4kg, pullout pantry weighs 3kg 130mm wide x 1800mm holds heap and less bending over. Many things from ebay

Tony

 

 

 

-- Edited by Eaglemax on Sunday 22nd of September 2019 05:02:49 PM

Peter_n_Margaret wrote:

---

As you say, the best place to start is at the design stage. It gets harder after that, but gains can still be made.
The first "trick" is to put a price on weight.
How much would you be prepared to pay if someone said they could take out 100kg? $2,000? That would mean $20 per kg. That would be a conservative place to start, but the higher the price, the more gains you can make.
Then look at everything you can and ask if there is a lighter version (or better still if you can leave it behind).
Example... Margaret likes to read. I bought her a Kindle. It easily pays for itself @ $20 per kg.
No glass permitted. My scotch is decanted into PET bottles. We have a collection of plastic screw top containers for food from olives to jam that they all get re-packed into. When we go into a town and do a big shop-up, the re-packing happens in the supermarket car park and all the surplus packaging goes into their bin.
Check out the cutlery and the dinner set. We have plastic wine & scotch glasses. Stainless steel can often be more durable and lighter than other options.
Tools are a big issue for me. I found a stilson with an aluminium handle. Try to ensure that everything has more than one use.
Solar is lighter than generator plus fuel.
We can carry lots of fuel and water. Try not to carry more than you need for the next part of the journey.
Cheers,
Peter

---

 You gotta look after that single malt mate!

The machine came loose and bounced around destroying the mountings.

Stretch60 wrote:

---

Ditch the washing machine, took it out yesterday and it must have weighed 60kg. Now have a place to install the diesel heater that weighs about 5kg

---

 You can replace that washing machine with a SPHERE ECOSPIN WASHER

 Larger items like sheets use a laundromat

Tony

-- Edited by Eaglemax on Monday 23rd of September 2019 08:14:12 AM

Be hard on yourself, and ask difficult questions.

1. Do I really need the bread maker, slow cooker, coffee machine, .?
2. Can I use a laundromat, or the CP laundry, or hand wash?....ditch the washing machine.
3. If I have solar, how often will I actually use the generator?
4. What about the chainsaw?....will I use it more than once or twice?
5. All those things I carry "just in case"...do I need the extra chair "in case we get visitors?
6. Do I really need all of those books or can I use ebooks, audio books, or online resources?
7. The hubby......do you really need to cart him and all of his stuff? .can you find a new one when you need a few jobs done.

Wow some good ideas in these posts.

Unfortunately I do not have a partner and as such travel alone.
I try to keep my food stocks, clothing and personal items to a minimum. I do have a reasonable tool kit but it is in my ute.
I am legal with my weights but I am still considering updating my ute mainly for comfort and performance but I would gain a little load weight advantage with a carefully selected upgrade.
I recently came across another fellow who was travelling alone and he claimed he saved a huge amount of weight by not having his partner with him. I think he more than made up for the saving by having a huge family van and a full kit of everything in the motor vehicle. My observations would have an educated guess and still believe that he would be overweight.
Careful planning when purchasing or building as well as careful planning when loading is important.

Hi Ian,
I've learnt to ditch the water unless we're heading "out bush" or somewhere remote.

The big killer is food - tins & jars. Pat often repacks the contents that come in jars into light weight plastic. Packet food is so much lighter. To add a change in the diet, we can dine out occasionally (lunch time) at a café, bakery.
And if we're going to stay at caravan parks, I don't carry our portable solar panels.

Brett - unfortunately we are stuck with clothes, having to travel often from one end of Australia to the other where the temperatures can upset us warm blooded types. But we take a light weight jacket each, a fleecy shirt or two, light weight jumper(s) & layer the rest of our clothing (T-shirts). And when it's cooler, who needs to change their clothes every two-four days? Underwear can be rinsed out while having a shower.

I'd love to carry all the goodies but do we really need them? I often wonder when I read the magazines where "Bill & Beryl" do all of these wonderful upgrades to their vans like adding two extra batteries, a generator, etc - all adding lots of weight.

As we're getting our D-Max today, we cleaned the Nissan out a couple of days ago.
1st shock - wow, where did all that stuff come from? The amount of door storage in the Isuzu, is a lot less!
2nd shock - the amount we were offered on the Patrol as a trade in!

This is a good and interesting thread Ian, and I am sure it will be interesting to newbies

As a part time traveller, I only carry the clothes for the season I am heading into
I try and carry minimum canned food, and purchase smaller amounts of fresh food, (I only have a 90 litre type fridge)
I try and research the availability of water, and carry a minimum amount when I know it is available, on the road ahead

If I was a full time traveller, I would probably be looking at the following items, (which would be expensive to purchase or ditch), if I was unlucky to find that my vehicle was overweight, from date of purchase

• Lightweight lithium house batteries, instead of heavy lead acid type batteries
• Lightweight solar panels, instead of normal heavier ones
• Try to have enough solar to ditch the genset
• Remove the electric step, and fit a normal lighter pull out one
• Buy a kindle and ditch the heavy books
• Drink can beer, and not stubies (if I was a big drinker)
• Ditch the washing machine. (I have no room for one, so have never missed it)
• Ditch the BBQ. (Once again I have no room for one, so have never missed it)
• Ditch the excess fuel cans.(Once again I have no room for excess fuel cans, so have never missed them, and have never found myself short of fuel, while travelling the bitumen)

Like others have said, if full time travelling, I would probably mark each item, and then throw away what I had not used, in the previous twelve months

Here is another suggestion for the pantry.

this morning I decanted a glass bottle of apple cider vinegar into a plastic applecider vinegar bottle. The empty plastic bottle weighed 42 grams, the empty glass bottle weighed 262g. Big difference.

I also decant all my spice bottles into plastic Ziploc bags, again, ditching the glass and saving weight

 

Whenarewethere, if you use Stahlwille, you have way too much money! when I was younger, that was what we used, but you can buy a whole set of spanners, for the price of one of those.