Portal Axled Trucks

[will_warne]

Sorry to hijack slightly what axles (preferably beam) out there has CTIS and aren't massivly heavy and preferanly have locking diffs. I know some of the Mog's do as well as some of the big Soviet stuff but that's as much as I know. Just wondering as I'll need 4 steerable corners for an up and coming project. I may be getting ahead of myself but I have a feeling it may take a while to find what I want....

[Astro_Al]

Will - if you mean solid beam axles with no portals, I really think you need to start a new thread. If you mean which portals have CTIS, then it is available for the hummer portals, if you can find some, and your truck isn't too heavy and you can graft them on to a solid axle, or live with indy suspension. CTIS can also be had for Mog axles (I have it).

That said, if you need CTIS for something, it's usually not impossible to see how it could be added to a lot of stuff? Most/all of the Dakar buggies run it (2wd, its illegal for the 4wds), which are custom applications.

4WS is irrelevant - if you can stick it on the front axle, you can stick it on the rear, even if it steers too.

Are these protalled 'corners' or what?

Al.

[Daan]

Anything can be made to work

Sisus arent portalled - they are just savage

put as many motors on a leccy winch as you like but its never gonna haul like this beastie

B)

[FridgeFreezer]

Will, which project in the vapour-build-queue is this then?

CTIS can be added to anything, the Dakar Bowler featured on Top Gear suddenly sprouted external flexi hoses down to the wheel hubs a while back, here's a slightly crude version thrown up by Google search:

[Corrode Finger]

Dumb person question again!

What the heck is CTIS?

So if i have followed these replys, the portal vehicles available are:

Unimog - Difficult to 'hybridise' - best stripped for the bits

Volvo - Seems possible to do, going back to my orig question. Even if its considered an odd way of getting a portal landy, by doing the swap in the opposite manner to convention. Also, going back to an earlier reply, why does this vehicle having leafs become a problem?

Simca - ????????

UAZ - whats that, russian i assume, does this make it totally oddball?

Then there are the Maxidrive type systems.

So following this logic, ie military based, What about the Pinzgauer?

[Astro_Al]

CTIS - central tyre inflation system. So you can inflate / deflate your tyres on-the-fly.

I think the reason most people just take the axles is that they split nicely off the donor vehicle, and whilst swapping them you can upgrade your suspension at the same time - or at least build something that suits, and the rest of the vehicle can pretty much stay unaltered. If you keep the chassis, you're going to keep a suspension set-up designed (e.g. unimog) for taking big loads across just about anything, rather than a setup for taking a light-ish racer across the same thing. You end up with everything (including the chassis) over-rated for its use, and heavy.

Leaves is no problem, its just we don't live in the 1900s any more. Sure you can run them. Fridgefreezer is, and... er, well, like I say: Fridgefreezer is.

What would you gain by changing the body? And if you decided its worth it, out of all the vehicles on the planet why would you choose a Land Rover body? (Not for fuel consumption, for a start...)?

Forget the Simcas.

Al.

[Ex Member]

That is it... why would you WANT to swap on a LR body. There is nothing speial about them and I'm quite sure the Volvo body is much better and already designed around the vehicle.

There are many things you "can" do. But there should be a point and hopefully the "point" is to come up with something better than before.

UAZ Absolute horrid carp and ****ty axles.

[Ex Member]

Pizgauers have portals, but they are independent suspension, interesting design, but shat for off roading. So do Hummers. People use Hummer portal boxes to make solid axles.

A couple of aftermarket portal axle makers.

Stazworks, Hummer portals and Ford 9" centers.

Portal-Tek, custom Volvo based portals with Ford 9" centers

[Corrode Finger]

What would you gain by changing the body? And if you decided its worth it, out of all the vehicles on the planet why would you choose a Land Rover body? (Not for fuel consumption, for a start...)?

Al.

Ok, a landy is not aesthetically pleasing( no offence but it aint italian pretty), so if using the volvo in its entire, well chassis etc as concluded......

What sort of body could be swapped on it, obviously its 91inches as posted elsewhere.

It can also have an alternative engine installed according to dollythelw, so possible extra oomph!! Volvo 2.3lt Turbo?

There is no fundamental reason for not doing a body swap, if not the conventional route, but life would be boring if we were all the same.

I am exploring ideas now, as things have developed from the first question.

[Corrode Finger]

Pizgauers have portals, but they are independent suspension, interesting design, but shat for off roading.

So is it the portal thats poor, or is it the independant suspension setup?

I do not know the answers hence all the questions, and i am learning stuff, even if no-one else is!!

[FridgeFreezer]

This made me laugh:

A UAZ will break down where no other car can go

Sounds like a LR then

Leaf springs are fine (everyone else is just behind the times with these silly coil spring thingies), it's just the multi-pack leaves don't have much flex (like stock LR springs) compared to parabolics. I think the Volvos rely on the big leaf packs to a degree to provide some anti-wrap.

[dollythelw]

UAZ Absolute horrid carp and ****ty axles.

Ive got a lot of respect for 'em - they take a massive kicking and best of all if they do break down you can fix them with a spoon

[CosZuki]

UAZ Absolute horrid carp and ****ty axles.

After seeing these in the combat i would not say this, Jez must of seen an executive model if they had a spoon in the tool kit all i saw was rocks and twigs! a friend back there has an SJ with the UAZ portals fitted, baby portal i would say is a better term but they semed to reckon it worked quite well.

with regard to the winch on that Sisu truck it could even pull Jez out of bed after eating twelve pasties!! watiching it pull another truck of comparable size from a swamp and up a bank with not too great an effort was cetainly something. almost as much fun as watching the Hiab pulling a toyota to bits after managing to get more stuck than a very stuck thing.

was it not on this forum i read about someone in Oz having made their own prtal boxes onto LR axles?

[Ex Member]

That is Bill's Rover you are thinking about.

He's on another level than this discussion. He has also built a few Volvo axled rigs for other people. Those are he light duty mods. I guess we should have pointed you there first as Bill has thought about everything more than anyone I've seen on the internet. From my few years living in Australia, there are quite a few guys there that know more and have done more with their left pinky fingers than most of the net wheelers could dream of. Most of them have never been near a computer.

[CosZuki]

another level true, but still relevant to corrode fingers question i thought?

[bill van snorkle]

A couple of weeks ago I saw a GU Nissan Patrol belonging to Marks 4WD Adaptors here in Melbourne with their prototype portals. And very nicely made they were too. Overall, due to the fact that standard Nissan axle assemblies are much stronger than LandRovers, I feel these would be heavier duty than Maxidrive portals at a similar price.

UAZ portals are well covered and protected by the wheel rim, but being of the internally toothed ring gear and pinion design they do not give a huge increase in ground clearance,about 2.5'' at a guess, plus an inch or so due to having a more compact differential than the non portalled UAZ's have.

Simca/Sumb portals are extremely heavy and bulky, and the gear reduction happens before the CV joints so are not an optimum design strengthwise, but having said that I think they would never feel any pain under a LandRover/ Toyot/Nissan size vehicle.

To mount a LandRover body on a flexible non rigid chassis would require the fabrication of a rigid subframe to prevent body cracking and door flying open all the time. This would add considerably to the overall weight of the vehicle.

Bill.

Edit. I wrote this post in response to some of the questions posed on page 1. I didn,t notice page 2 so sorry if I basically repeated what others have said.

Thanks for the compliment Red 90, but I am not so sure about being on another level. And if so I am not sure it is necessarily a good thing either. My wife keeps reminding me of how wealthy we would be now if we had met much earlier before I ''wasted'' my best years on that ugly/ noisy/ horrible pile of green and black pidgeon poo in the driveway and all the other abominations that preceded it.

[white90]

RE:

that ugly/ noisy/ horrible pile of green and black pidgeon poo in the driveway and all the other abominations that preceded it.

Bill harsh but fair way to describe any Ex wife

[dollythelw]

ahh you'll have to forgive us web wheelers Red90 - one day we may get to build a truck or even see some stuff for real instead of just reading about it

Bill - did they increase the track width out by a lot or not?

[bill van snorkle]

So is it the portal thats poor, or is it the independant suspension setup?

It's the indy suspension that is at fault. It is great for charging across rough broken ground at breakneck speed, but absolutely useless at maintaining traction by keeping all wheels in contact with the ground. Without difflocks a Pinz would be about as useful offroad as a childs tricycle. The lack of axle articulation often see the Pinz, particularly the 4x4 versions lose stability and fall over when crossing ruts or ditches at an oblique angle. The lack of bogie articulation on the 6x6 versions is a problem when cresting steep hummocks, because the rear wheels leave the ground fairly early thus transferring the weight of the rear end to the middle wheels, which now have an additional 2 metres of overhang acting as a counterbalance, which in turn causes the front wheels to unload transforming the rig into an ungainly 2wd see saw with a mind of its own that is likely to either bog down on loose soft surfaces or slew sideways on firmer ground.

White 90 wrote. ''Bill, Harsh but a fair way to describe any Ex wife''.

Very true, but I dont keep my ex's in my driveway. I bury them in the back yard, below the lemon tree.

Bill.

[bill van snorkle]

ahh you'll have to forgive us web wheelers Red90 - one day we may get to build a truck or even see some stuff for real instead of just reading about it

Bill - did they increase the track width out by a lot or not?

You mean on the Nissan Jez ? No they appeared to be very unobtrusive with just a 2'' flexy flair added to the original metal wings. In fact it was only that I was aware that the company was developing portals that I bothered to take a look underneath. This was in the parking lot at a 4wd swap meeting with several hundred other headcases, and I was the only person to crawl under. Most everyone else probably thought it was just another Nissan with a 4'' suspension lift.

I am no engineer but I think the conversion would be easily engineerable for registration purposes. It was so well executed.

Bill.

[dollythelw]

Thanks Bill - next time you get your box brownie to work can you ping up a daguerrotype of them? sounds like a good solution

[Corrode Finger]

Having read Bill's post on the Pinzgauer, regarding the independant suspansion being the issue, it kinda naturally leads to, for me anyhow, the question of whether they can be robbed and used elsewhere.

I know this sort of comes back to 'convention', after all the other questions, but as i have said before, i do not know lots about this, and i am finding it interesting. I am sure others are too, looking at the numbers of views, but i am happy to be the 'stupid question asker', without the blinkers, eh Jez?

[dollythelw]

I'd assume the killer factor with using pinzy parts and remaking indy suspension into a usable truck would be cost.

hows about....... subaru 4wd drivetrain and hummer portals? then the only eyewatering expensive will be custom driveshafts and CVs that are happy to live at a high operating angle required to give the articulation I suspect you want.

have a nose around google for "trophy truck" and see what indy buggies can do but remember they are living in a different environment from the one you want to play in?

What would help is starting at the finish of a project. If you identify exactly what you want the car to do and the environment its got to do it in and then work backwards it will make your life much easier and leave you with a vehicle that ticks all the boxes you want.

odd ideas are good - saves the boredom and ultimate demise of established solutions

[Daan]

I believe there is one vehicle which ticks all boxes: the bucher Duro. This vehicle has portal de dion axles: basically independant, but with good ground contact as if it was a live axle. One day, I might pick one up from a military auction....

http://www.4x4mag.co.uk/septfeatures/septduro.htm

Daan

[FridgeFreezer]

I wanna see someone bolt two old Range Rovers together to make an 8x8 Escaro style thing.