So I can avoid making the same mistakes.. What do you mean by it's too heavy on one side? Like, left side is heavier than the right side? or front vs rear?
I can't even fathom what kind of build would make it too heavy to one side, didn't really even think it was remotely possible given the base weight of the bus, so I'm looking to be enlightened before I make similar mistakes.
You're exactly on-point. The previous owners/builders placed the water tank on the driver's side, which is also where all of the hardware and controllers are, as well as the head of the main/back bed, as well as the guest bed/sleeper-sofa is. The passenger side has the door, the bathroom, the grey-water tank, the closet, and a massive urethane-covered live-edge slab for the kitchen. Even though the kitchen slab is probably over 200 lbs, it's still hideously unbalanced when mostly dry, and even worse when it's filled up.
I'm also something like 4K lbs heavier in the back than I am in the front, but it should also be mentioned that I am in a "rare" BB "mini-bird", which is basically the same as the van cutaways, but with a bread-box truck front instead of the E30/E350/E450 front-ends. It's a 24' skoolie, built on the old Chevy P30 chassis, which is essentially their 1-ton drivetrain on top of a Medium-Duty frame and chassis. I got the bus specifically for that reason, and the fact that the engine and tranny should be familiar to any mechanic worth the price of their tools. Also parts are everywhere, in any store, even though I'm something like two or three generations behind the current model of production.
Additionally, it would be possible to add a 4WD conversion to my skoolie, but upon thinking about that idea further, as cool as it might be, if I ever get myself stuck someplace, I can't imagine who I would have to call in order to get some help getting myself unstuck. But the possibility exists....
For further clarification, my bus's "backside" is essentially centered over the rear axle, with a 24' almost exactly from the outermost edge of the rear bumper to the very front of my front bumper. With such a long overhang, I've got the clearance to park in in a single normal parking spot if I back up and hang about 3' over the curb, and I can fit into an XL parking spot like if I were driving an extended-cab 1-ton dually pickup with a full-length bed on it--and you can usually find those kind of parking spots at your Big-Box hardware stores, wally-worlds, and your tractor-supplys. And while that's all nice, it also means that my bus is a bit more susceptible to balancing issues both front-to-back as well as left-to-right since everything is essentially centered directly on top of my rear axle. Being a little heavy in the back isn't horrible, but the 4K I currently am is a bit excessive, although I've got great traction, even in mud. But the left-to-right balancing is definitely too much, and I'll need to do a complete strip and rebuild in order to correct it, and that's probably going to be a year or two out from now. And I may not even build it out as an RV, I may turn it into a tool truck, or something like a mobile HAM radio base-station; or I may come up with something else to do with it, only time and my whims will tell.
And yes, weight distribution is important, although generally much, much less of a concern in your more typical 36'-40' builds with your much longer wheel-bases. But mainly, you should focus on the left-to-right balancing, since it's no fun having your ******* pucker every time you have to turn left, even if you can make up that time when you turn right.
