Originally Posted by GBC
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I did a lot of research into this about 6 months or so ago.... A few things I can confirm from the information I gained, which I believe I verified as being accurate at the time.
Toyota did not specify a GCM for 200 series Land Cruisers (as recently as about 3 months or so ago). Clearly now they do. I verified this at the time both from spending close to an hour with a Toyota dealer and their technical guys on the phone. They also placed a call to ARB at the time to verify if there were any restrictions on GCM (they agreed the Cruisers did not have one). Arb commented on the GVM upgrades, and its effect to tow capacities with regard to a Cruiser. They also reconfirmed (as we know) that where a GCM is specified, a GVM upgrade cannot increase the GCM. To their knowledge, their was no legal way to effect a GCM change.
All advice received that day was consistent with all else that I had researched from many reputable sources. At that point Cruisers had no GCM set by the manufacturer. Thus they could be loaded to the GVM as well as be at max tow capacity. It would be interesting to ponder whether the specs for a Cruiser bought say 1 year ago, now magically has a GCM imposed on it that did not exist at the time of purchase??? I would be interested to know if, contrary to Toyotas literature, do Cruisers actually have a GCM stamped on their compliance plates?
The down side to a "stock" cruiser was GVM. Put 350kg of tow ball load and you were left with (give or take) another 200kg of payload only in the vehicle. Not much at all.... Thus the GVM upgrades looked necessary to legally tow anything of capacity, due to the obvious 350kg of tow ball load immediately on the vehicle. ARB's exact words to me, "most cursers driving round with a bit of gear bolted to them and 4 good sized passengers are illegal every day of the week, forget about what they might want to tow on top of that..."
This is not to say they are not a capable tow vehicle, they just obviously also have some issues hitting the numbers like all other vehicles when at the 3.5t tow limit.
I agree with Gofishin's calc above but, while a GVM upgrade cannot increase GCM, it could help keep the GVM legal while the overall package is at the max for GCM.
I believe the discoveries have no GCM from my last research, however like a Cruiser, they have a pretty dismal payload after you factor 350kg on the tow ball also, with not a lot of kg left for passengers or gear. Any claims that they blitz the opposition on paper to me is not correct, as they fail badly for GVM.
At least the utes all have high overall GVM payloads, thus deal with the tow ball download on paper. But the GCM gets them back the other way and limits the entire package still.
The Cruiser, being considered the king, now surprisingly is limited by a lowish stock GVM and also has the overall limiting factor of GCM to deal with, so their is now not much of a fix option for the low payload. (although the GCM is not as retractive as they are n the dual cabs).
I also notice that Toyota still have no GCM listed for a 70 series, consistent with what I found a number of months ago. Based on that a 70 series ute actually has the best payload while towing at 3.5t, by a long wary compared to all others.
A single cab 70 series has a payload of 885kg remaining, AFTER it also takes 350kg of tow ball download from your trailer. ie. 3.5t boat on back properly set up with nearly 900kg of other great in and on the vehicle.....
Pity they are not what we want to be driving the other 98% of the time...
