lots of fantastic info here for anyone thinking about portals. From someone with a good bit of experience with a portal Bronco.Since this thread was initially created we finally got the opportunity to wheel with other broncos on hard trails, both with and without portals, and the other brands of portals. At this point I’m not convinced they’re the ultimate bolt on solution compared to long travel. Certainly they have their place, but with social media trends it almost seems like they are more of a status symbol than anything else. Gucci purse for your mall crawler.
The portal rigs all seemed to start bouncing sooner on the same obstacles compared to conventional builds. Particularly those that still have rubber components in their control arms rather than full heim. Shock tuning might also play a factor there - hard to know as none of the shocks had been dialed in yet for the portals.
Scrub radius issues are real. The portals do affect the ability to steer on high traction surfaces when you’re aired down. More forces will be applied to the tierods as well. You’ll really need to be picky on the tierod upgrades to ensure they have a good failure point or you might break the rack itself (saw it twice) if you have an upgraded housing.
The increased leverage on suspension components is also something you’ll want to address. Double shear UCA mounts and stronger UCA’s at a minimum. One rig with Tibus portals snapped the uniball on a UCA while pushing up a rock maybe 1.5 feet high. (Certainly fatigue was a contributing factor from everything it had done previously)
Noise isn’t an issue with any of them
Serviceability and parts - steel can be welded, on the trail even. 7075 aluminum isn’t going to happen. If you break it you’re waiting on new parts to arrive. I’m told werewolf does try to use as many off the shelf parts as possible, but there are still proprietary parts associated with them. That applies to all of the brands though. One werewolf owner is pretty sick of the leaks. They might have over tightened the stubshaft during the install but it’s not certain at the moment. They just know there’s a leak. I’ve seen plenty of werewolf portals that didn’t leak. We had issues with 74w leaks from the stubshaft seals and fill plugs but that all seems to have been fixed .
Driving the werewolf bronco I could definitely feel the additional gearing reduction and weight from the steel. Stability felt a little better than ours eveb though our bronco with 40’s was still lower than theirs on 38’s. But I believe they’re also wider in addition to being much heavier. Initially I saw the extra weight as a drawback but if you’re getting your suspension revalved for the portals anyway then might as well enjoy the weight if you’re not a baja guy.
The gearing reduction saving your axles seems to be blown a bit out of proportion. Recognizing that driving habits play a role, there are plenty of owners running the recommended 38” tire size and still breaking their axles. We’re on heavy 40’s and have yet to break anything, but wifey is usually pretty soft on the throttle. So that helps.
very interesting observation that the portal trucks tend to be bouncier. You are probably talking about more difficult obstacles only? At some point the shocks most definitely need to be tuned differently as unsprung weight increases. Just not sure when that is. Interesting to think about.
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