My family has a small (incidental) side business that transports overseas shipping boxes, with our Freightliner Sprinter passenger van. We, on occasion drive up a load of boxes on the five hour trip, to the Portland warehouse. These boxes are destined to rendezvous with a shipping container for the long trip to the Philippines.
Sprinter vans have deep roots in delivery van ancestry, after all that's what they were originally designed for. It should come as no surprise that they do this job, among others, very well. One attribute of this admirable trait is that the heavy cargo being carried is not so obvious, not by the typical rear end sagging that many other vehicles give as a tell. Indeed, I have loaded my rig up to the gills on many occasions and was not pointed skyward as I drove down the road.
With this in mind, I was wowed and delighted to find that there is actually a relatively inexpensive device that easily uses your smart phone to weigh your vehicle! It plugs into your vehicle's OBD II Port and works with your mobile smart phone to tell you what your vehicle weighs.
Not only that, but it can also even (supposedly) even tell you the weight of the trailer you have hooked onto your vehicle, among many other options. I say supposedly, because I haven't tried this part yet. The ratings from other users do look promising however.
I received mine in the mail yesterday and decided to try it out today. So I plugged it in while at an old Kmart parking lot and quickly calibrated the unit to my vehicle. it wants level ground and it's best to have space to drive a straight line up to 15 mph before stopping. That was about it.
It came back with a weight of my Sprinter around 6500 pounds, with me outside. I couldn't believe that number. I was really thinking that this device was off by a thousand pounds, so I was planning on sending it back, but I decided to drive the 10 or so miles out to the nearest free weigh scale just to confirm. I am very glad that I did, sure enough the public weigh scale confirmed 6700 pounds, with me in it.
I'm looking forward to putting this to work on our future travels, but as for now I am quite pleased.
The only real downside to this wonderful device is that it uses bluetooth and doesn't like to share other bluetooth uses with the car. They apparently designed that purposefully, for better accuracy.
No matter, after I have the weight numbers I am looking for, I can easily switch on the bluetooth radio. The device can just remain quietly plugged into the OBD II Port for whenever I may need it again.
The retail value is $135, however many retailers have it as low as $99, which is what I paid.
Its worth a look!
Sprinter vans have deep roots in delivery van ancestry, after all that's what they were originally designed for. It should come as no surprise that they do this job, among others, very well. One attribute of this admirable trait is that the heavy cargo being carried is not so obvious, not by the typical rear end sagging that many other vehicles give as a tell. Indeed, I have loaded my rig up to the gills on many occasions and was not pointed skyward as I drove down the road.
With this in mind, I was wowed and delighted to find that there is actually a relatively inexpensive device that easily uses your smart phone to weigh your vehicle! It plugs into your vehicle's OBD II Port and works with your mobile smart phone to tell you what your vehicle weighs.
Not only that, but it can also even (supposedly) even tell you the weight of the trailer you have hooked onto your vehicle, among many other options. I say supposedly, because I haven't tried this part yet. The ratings from other users do look promising however.
I received mine in the mail yesterday and decided to try it out today. So I plugged it in while at an old Kmart parking lot and quickly calibrated the unit to my vehicle. it wants level ground and it's best to have space to drive a straight line up to 15 mph before stopping. That was about it.
It came back with a weight of my Sprinter around 6500 pounds, with me outside. I couldn't believe that number. I was really thinking that this device was off by a thousand pounds, so I was planning on sending it back, but I decided to drive the 10 or so miles out to the nearest free weigh scale just to confirm. I am very glad that I did, sure enough the public weigh scale confirmed 6700 pounds, with me in it.
I'm looking forward to putting this to work on our future travels, but as for now I am quite pleased.
The only real downside to this wonderful device is that it uses bluetooth and doesn't like to share other bluetooth uses with the car. They apparently designed that purposefully, for better accuracy.
No matter, after I have the weight numbers I am looking for, I can easily switch on the bluetooth radio. The device can just remain quietly plugged into the OBD II Port for whenever I may need it again.
The retail value is $135, however many retailers have it as low as $99, which is what I paid.
Its worth a look!
RSS Feed
