This post may contain affiliate links.

We’re big proponents of weighing your RV.  It’s a smart safety practice, and it’s not that hard to do.  But many RVers find it intimidating, so they don’t do it.  We tried to show it was easy by having Stef weigh our RV in an evening gown (yes, that happened), in this video.  But even using the app we show, you still have to physically locate a scale and drive your rig to it.

The folks at Curt wanted to come up with a better way to do this (pun very much intended).  They approach this with their BetterWeigh device by using Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion, and other measurements to calculate the weight of your rig.  It’s a brilliant idea, and I love anything that’s a throwback to high school physics. So I bought one within minutes of finding it on Amazon.

But does it work?  I had to know.  So when it arrived, I tested it against our nearby CAT scale.  The result is this video:

 

How Does It Work?

If you remember Newton’s 2nd Law, it goes something like this:

The acceleration of an object produced by a force is directly proportional to the magnitude of the force, in the same direction as the force, and inversely proportional to the mass of the object.

 

Long story short, that boils down to an equation that you can solve for weight (if you assume gravity to be a constant, which, for most RVs, is a pretty solid assumption).  Weight is equal to the force on your RV (engine torque, delivered through the wheels), divided by the acceleration of your RV.  The torque from your engine, as well as vehicle speed, are available through your rig’s OBDII connection.  The BetterWeigh ups the ante here by also having on board acceleration measurement.  So, in theory, all the information needed to calculate your vehicle’s weight is available to the BetterWeitgh.  It should work!

 

The Results

I can’t sugar coat this, the results were pretty disappointing.  After spending pretty much a whole afternoon with the device, I was never able to get a reported RV weight that was any closer than 660 pounds to Lance’s actual weight.  This was in spite of running through the calibration procedure multiple times.  And the calibration procedure actually involves telling the app how much your rig weighs!!!  So if you consider that the BetterWeigh knew what the RV weighed, and yet still couldn’t tell me what the RV weighed.  Well, that’s not good.

The data came out something like this:

Error
Actual RV Weight8740 lbs0
First Run (no calibration)7400 lbs-1340 lbs
Second Run (no calibration)7000 lbs-1740 lbs
Third Run (estimated calibration of 1600 lbs payload)9800 lbs+1060 lbs
Fourth Run (same estimated calibration)10000 lbs+1260 lbs
Fifth Run (calibration with actual vehicle weight)9400 lbs+660 lbs

So what theories do I have about why it performed poorly?  Well, while Newton’s 2nd works pretty well in the classroom, this was a real-life situation.  I tried my best, but it’s likely the torque applied by the engine was not a single, constant value.  There were a few times when I felt the RV shift during a run, so that could have been a factor.  I can’t really see how the BetterWeigh could account for the rolling resistance of the tires, or the drag forces on the vehicle (though at low speeds, those aren’t that large).  And there could have been delays, lags, or dropouts in the data reported to the BetterWeigh through the OBDII port.

I’m going to put in a call to Curt customer service, and see if they have any tips or tricks on getting this thing to work properly.  The kid in me who won first prize at the state Science Fair really wanted this thing to work!  It’s possible there’s a version 2.0 out there and maybe I just got an older one?  I don’t know.

UPDATE – 9/23/2020:  I have been contacted by Curt, and they are interested in getting to the bottom of it.  This is encouraging news.  Watch this space for further developments!

 

I’d love it if this thing worked out, because then perhaps more people would weigh their RVs and we’d all be safer.  If and when they get the bugs worked out, I’ll let you know.  But for now, I’d recommend you save your money and spend it instead on a trip to the CAT scale to weigh your RV.

You’ve got to know I would never joke about Science Fair, right?  1984, BABY!!!

PS:  The BetterWeigh also had functions for determining trailer weight, tongue weight, etc.  I had originally planned to test those, but since I couldn’t get a proper base weight out of the device, we never went there.