WHOA! Portal Axles for Gladiator look awesome

[Lunentucker]

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[Rusty PW]

I'm still a newb, so I probably should have done a search prior to posting, the video just got me excited.

Did you wet your pants?

 

[21RG]

Many years ago I went four wheeling with a guy who had a Land Cruiser on Volvo portal axles. It was pretty much bulletproof on every trail I seen it on. The guy was into old military vehicles and said he had the axles laying around so he put them on his 90's land cruiser

There were two in TN, one was orange and sold to someone out west a year or two ago. The other was solid white, it went through a couple of hands and ended up in PA with me. The LC was beat and trashed when I picked it up. I wheel it occasionallly.

I changed out the old drum brakes to disk brakes, I did a ton of machining to convert them. The axles may be going under my 2006 LJ.

 

[Rahkmalla]

Ah yes portal axles. Seems like everyone who finds out they exist gets initially excited about the idea until they discover the price. I know I did.

Ground and tire clearance without a body lift? What's not to love? Oh, wait they cost half as much as my truck uninstalled? Yea... I'll stick with the aev puck lift I have planned for one day.

 

[dcmdon]

The HUMVEE / Hummer H1 also have portal axles.

 

[RodRecket]

I think they are awesome just like I think hemi swaps are awesome. I'll never have either because I'm not going to pull a second mortgage to finance my truck, and that's ok with me.

 

[rharr]

Ah yes portal axles. Seems like everyone who finds out they exist gets initially excited about the idea until they discover the price. I know I did.

Ground and tire clearance without a body lift? What's not to love? Oh, wait they cost half as much as my truck uninstalled? Yea... I'll stick with the aev puck lift I have planned for one day.

Yeap... Price and then they also forget portals aren't so hot as a daily driver set up. They are cool for dirt work but they aren't something i would want to be crusin down the high way at 75 on.

Way to much additional wear and tear for that kinda of work, their is a reason they are only used on military rigs.

 

[RubiNewbCB]

There's a Gladiator in this video with Portals from the Link shared earlier.

 

[BearFootSam]

The HUMVEE / Hummer H1 also have portal axles.

Yeah, I was going to say, if you really want portal axles a surplus HMMWV is probably the most pragmatic option. I wouldn't want them on a DD, you are stuck in a low gear ratio. Ever driven a humvee on the highway? It sucks.

 

[fourfa]

3.73 axle plus these particular portals is the equivalent of 4.56s (am I the only one that watched the video?). Plenty of people doing that daily on 37+ tires

No one's yet mentioned the additional drag of 4 extra gear reduction stages, but it's significant. Looking forward to someone showing up here saying "what's wrong with my 9mpg Jeep on portals"

 

[timwiller]

I'm amazed how many people haven't heard of them before.

https://www.jeepgladiatorforum.com/forum/threads/portal-axles.59538/post-979597

the FSJ folks talk about them every once in a while... the ones with tracks are cool.

 

[rharr]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/3143424275...UQbbODw0g1KOFQkjA%3D|ampid:PL_CLK|clp:2047675

something like this....

Looks like lots of work

 

[Beowulf]

Seems like new wheels would be in order to keep the tires semi tucked. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but it it looks like you need something with an extra 2" inches to keep them under the flares.

 

[CrazyCooter]

Portals are pretty cool, but that screams "maintenance nightmare" to me. Wonder how much more noise and parasitic drag is introduced by all of those extra gears? Leverage on an already sketchy front axle housing/ball joints?

 

[21RG]

The HUMVEE / Hummer H1 also have portal axles.

They are portal hubs set on an independent suspension. I broke several of them along with the sub-frame on deployments. The steering is extremely weak. The brakes are awesome, but set on the outer edges of the differential and not on the hubs where the tires mount.

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