I told a friend she could use my little minivan to drive out to the Chicago area to pick up a buttload of free cat food (Royal Canin dry, in bags, for local cat rescues.)
My only stipulation is that she not overload it. The middle bucket seats are already out…I am thinking about 1500 lbs is reasonable if the weight is sensibly distributed? I’m basing this on the fact that it’s a seven-passenger minivan so presumably can accomodate seven 200-ish lb adults.
Look at the GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating) which should be labeled on the driver side door on the same sticker where it tells you what pressure to keep your tires at.
The GVWR is not how much extra weight you can carry, it is how much total weight your chassis can handle. So what ever your vehicle weighs empty subtract that from the GVWR and that’s how much you can safely carry. Also remember to set your tire pressure correctly before setting off.
Find the GVWR (gross vehicle weight rating) on the door plate; a label on either the driver’s door aperture or the edge of the driver’s door. Will also have the recommended tire pressures on it. Subtract the car’s curb weight and the approximate weight of the occupants, and there you go.
ETA: damn you automagic.
No kidding, thanks! Well that’s easy enough, then.
Curb weight = 3815 lb, GVWR = 5445 lbs. So about 1500 lbs is right, after subtracting my friend’s weight (WAG about 160 lbs.)
I’ll get it in for an oil change/fluid check this week…the sticker says 35 pressure/241 psi for tires, so a little lower for a warm-weather drive and carrying extra weight, right? I already told her the fuel mileage will suck, especially on the trip back with a full load. It’s a nice little van but has sucky fuel mileage.
No, don’t go lower on the tire pressure. The tires can handle their full rated load only when inflated to the max pressure number listed on the sidewall. Any decrease from that results in de-rating of the load capacity.
I would go with exactly the pressure the manufacturer printed on the door tag.
Normally I would say RTFM, but I just pulled up the owner’s manual for your car (available at www.ford.com) and it does not say. :rolleyes:
This is probably due to the myriad of different wheel, tire, and suspension combos available on your vehicle.
What you can do is look on the driver’s door pillar (the B pillar, the one with the latch not the hinge) and look for the FMVSS sticker which will list the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) for your car. What it won’t tell you is the current weight. But if you can find a truck scale, for a few dollars you can get that number and do the math.
as a rough off hand guess it will be a lot less than 1500 lbs.
no, the recommended pressure settings are for cold tires. “Cold” meaning ambient temperature. underinflating tires is bad because the additional sidewall flex will create more heat.
ETA: you have to subtract your weight too 
No on both regards. The fact that the weather is warmer will already be reflected in the pressure of the “cold” tire. Carrying extra weight implies the tires should need more pressure, not less. The more weight the tires are carrying the more they will tend to pancake, which leads to problems like they had with the Ford Exploder. Lowering the pressure would tend to make this even worse. Probably best to stick with the sticker pressure though.
The MAX tire pressure listed on the tire sidewall will always be more than what the manufacturer recommends on the sticker. Do not set it up to the MAX tire pressure, stick to what it says on the sticker.
To the OP set your tires to 35 psi (241 kPa) while the tires are cold, or as cold as they are going to get that day. Add a little more if you have been driving around a bit since that will increase the temperature of your tire.
The reason you want to set your tire pressure higher when the tires are warm is once the tires cool down the pressure will decrease. The same thing happens when you put a warm sealed empty plastic bottle in the freezer, the pressure inside will decrease.
Yup, I went to the FM first but you are correct - it doesn’t say!
Thanks for the heads up on the tire pressure y’all, will do.
She should make sure to eyeball the van while she’s loading it up to make sure the back isn’t sagging too much. A few years back a friend and I loaded probably about 1000 lbs of building supplies in the back of his old Dodge minivan and the tires scraped the wheel wells the whole way home. We had the same theory that it was a seven-passenger van and should therefore be able to carry at least 180 X 7 ish pounds, which may have been true when it was new, but it sure wasn’t on 10 year old shocks!
Unless they are inflatable air shocks, their age should have no effect on carrying capacity. Bounce and control, certainly, but not weight capacity.
I was going to answer to him the same way but then I thought if the purpose of the shocks is to resist compression and expansion of the springs to dampen them, then worn out shocks could make the spring compress just a little bit further then it would if the shocks were brand new.
Er, right. I was thinking springs but typed shocks. :smack:
I doubt the van was intended to carry 7 people weighing 180 pounds even when it was new.
Minivans are typically for families, and it was probably designed to carry 2 or 3 adults and several children.
Don’t forget to add your weight and that of any passengers to the curb weight!
Now I’m curious where you’re getting the curb weight? Have you actually weighed the minivan?
Back in the 70’s I had a Ford pickup. I don’t remember the exact values, but the GVW was some number, I stopped at a weight station and asked them to run me over the scales. The resulting value, with two persons and a full tank of fuel was only 450 pounds less than the listed GVW. Not much left of what was called a “half ton pickup”
One thing you may run into with a consumer vehicle carrying near maximum weight is that it is FAR more susceptible (when fully loaded down) to having the body or suspension mechanisms cracked or damaged of you hit a bump or a pothole when loaded and it bottoms out.
This happened to me during college when I was using my father’s big Chrysler Fury to move some furniture and did $ 700 in damage to the suspension when I hit a fairly shallow pothole. I had driven over similar potholes many times without the car loaded down with no problems.
You’re being nice person, but there’s no way I would allow someone to use my car like this. It’s asking for mechanical trouble now, or down the line.
Donate enough to her so she can rent a U-haul type truck it. It will carry far more at far less risk.
This site says max payload is 1448 lbs, minus 160 for your friend equals 1288 lbs max of cat food. I don’t know if I’d trust those figures and would probably say 1200 max, or 1000 if I cared about the van. Of course, you should use the sticker in the door instead of internet figures.
Taking out the seats might actually get you close to 1500lbs of food, but that’s just guesswork and the van will be maxed out, if not overloaded. Since you don’t want her to overload it, I would use a conservative 1000-1200.
I was also skeptical that it was designed to carry 7 adults but 1448/7=206 lbs.