KGM Ssangyong Reviews

I can see why you’d want to make this change as a lap-sash seat belt is a much safer alternative to a lap-only belt. Provided the seat belt you’re fitting conforms to all Australian Standards, it shouldn’t be a problem, but you might find it’s not as simple as it sounds. That’s because the lap-sash belt is a three-point design. That is, it attaches to the car in three (rather than two) places. That means it requires a shoulder-height mounting point.

The thing about that is that the car itself may not have a proper seat-belt attachment point in that area. If that’s the case, you’d need to have a mounting point added to the car and this would probably have to be inspected by an engineer before it would be legal to use. The mount itself would have to comply with all relevant Standards, and so would the method of its attachment to the car.

But it would be worth checking if there’s a mounting point already there. We’d also suggest you contact your state registration authorities to make sure they don’t have a problem with this change as the car may need a modification plate to remain legal. It would also be wise to let your insurance company know that the car has been modified in this way.

A lot of caravans of this size can easily weigh up to (and perhaps a little bit more than) 3000kg. The good news is that the Rexton is rated to tow 3500kg. So make sure the van and everything in it including things like water tanks, weighs less than 3500kg and that you don’t exceed the towball down-weight limit.

Don’t forget, either that the Rexton has a Gross Combination Mass limit of 6460kg, which means that with the full 3500kg on the towball, plus the kerb weight of the vehicle (2130kg) you only have 830kg for everything in the car including passengers, luggage, fuel and any accessories you’ve added. In this regard, the Rexton isn’t too bad and some other vehicles have precious little payload remaining once there’s a big van hanging off the back.

The other thing to remember is that with all that weight on board, you might find the turbo-diesel engine is working pretty hard most of the time. Many caravanners prefer a vehicle with a larger capacity engine on that basis.