I was asked by Kevin Sharpe on the Open Inverter forum to try and weigh the car before conversion starts.
This was the perfect excuse to buy a new toy! I bought a 1000kg crane scale from EBay. It is only cheap so I am not going to rely on it to be the most accurate or stable weighing scales but we will see.
My first test was to lift the back of the car using the tow hitch.
That gave me a weight reading of 406kg.
However, I then realised that this would not be an accurate way to weigh the car as the 406kg is behind the rear axle. So I had to weigh the car at the wheels themselves.
I bought some 2000kg capacity lifting straps as I figured that I should use rated equipment for heavy lifting. I did also buy some 1000kg capacity lifting straps to do this with but I grabbed the wrong ones from the workshop.
I started at the offside rear wheel. I looped the strap through the wheel spokes and lifted until the wheel was just a couple of millimetres off the ground and got a weight of 283.5kg.
I then repeated the process with the nearside rear wheel and got a weight of 336.5kg. So the nearside rear is 53kg heavier.
Rear axle weight is 620kg.
I then carried on around the front near side and found the car was too low to the ground to get the crane underneath. I ended up jacking up the car and putting each wheel on a block of wood to get more clearance. I need to get the car higher off the ground anyway so I may be investing in something taller, ramps or bigger blocks, to put the car onto.
Anyway, with the car raised, I was then able to get the crane in place and and got a weight of 360.5kg.
And then onto the offside front where I got s weight of 497.5kg.
Wow! That’s heavy!
The offside is 137kg heavier.
Front axle weight is 858kg.
So, with only about 10 litres of fuel in the tank that gives us a total car weight of 1478kg with a 58% front and 42% rear split.