Thread: Don't believe a single number on your ID plate

I have owned a 1997 Camp'o'matic "Weekender" hard floor camper trailer for eight years now and had great service from it. It has been around Australia virtually twice , up Cape York and along the Northern Tele track, GRR twice , Kalumburu, Mitchell Falls, Tanami, Plenty with hardly a problem.

Recently there has been several posts on ExploreOz and other sites about the police stopping cars and caravans and checking weights etc.

I thought no problem with mine as it has a plate tare of 500Kg, and I took the split rims off and machined the brake drums and saved 54 KG.

I thought even if I had about 50Kg of stuff in it and had added some all will be well.
Well I took it to Simsmetal yesterday at West Gosford and they told me "840KG" . I thought about it and concluded there must be some mistake, maybe they read a 6 as an 8 , so I took it back today and 840Kg came up again in 200MM high led numbers.

This was without water in the tank, or diesel in the 2 jerries which will add about 100Kg plus I often take a bag of wood weighing 25 Kg.

What to do La?

Well I have resurrected 2X 10 inch ALKO electric drums that were sent in error 8 years ago , one with 5x6.5 imperial studs and one with an unknown 5x pattern, and took them to a local engineer to have the unknown pattern drilled to Land Rover pattern. I was even able to find the nuts! Lucky he understands as he has a nice 130 twin cab with a TD5.

I have ordered a Tekonsha Primus IQ controller and now will buy bearings and brake kits.

I still have a problem as the ID plate has all this fantasy stuff on it and the original Camp'o'matic manufacturer went out of business in 2004.

It has ID plate info GTM of 800 Kg, and suspension rating of 750Kg even though it has ALKO parallel bearings and hubs on independent suspension which are obviously good for twice that.. I always wondered why it has these enormous springs which must be about 300lbs per inch.

Anyway the moral of this story is don't believe a word that is on an ID plate.
The funny thing is that I cannot think of why the old bloke at Yatala built the thing with no brakes and pretended that it was under 750 Kg loaded unless he was keen to meet a price point and saved money on brakes or something.

He has sure left me with a problem in this modern over governed world.

Any one have any ideas on how to have the ID plate changed to give the proper payload? I will ring the Sydney dealer but expect no help there even though he is a Range Rover Club member.
Regards Philip A

Originally Posted by Mick_Marsh

Get a new ID plate from a trailer parts supplier and fill in the new details.
You've got the weight ticket already.
Print our and read the ADR's pertaining to trailers. It will probably require an inspection.
Then shoot off an inquiry to the registration authorities asking how to update the trailer details. It's a simple process here in Vic.

To get a new revised weight for your trailer you must get a an authorised weighbridge ticket, take it to the RMS, they will issue new rego papers with the correct weight, then you will have to take it to an authorised inspection station and have them stamp the new weight on your compliance plate. What I did was pop rivet a blank piece of Aluminium plate copied the numbers already there (except for weight) ,of course and the inspector stamped on the weight numbers, Regards Frank.