An interesting idea

[grimbo]

Got this from a guy in the US who is planning on doing this on his Zuk

We had to wait a while for the wrecker to get the trans out of one of
his wrecked cars so we went down the street to the VW place and looked over
some of his axles.
He had a set of those reduction axles from an older van and said he
would let them go for $100.00
We grabbed them and brought them home to check out as a means to build a
portal style axle for a Samurai.
After taking them apart we determined this would not be too hard to do if we
don't worry about getting all fancy with disc brakes etc. so these are gonna
be a winter project at the end of the year. They hhave a 1.388 reduction
and will turn in the reverse direction so we can flip the axle housing
getting a high pinion with an additional 4" of pumpkin clearance without
putting on bigger tires or more suspension lift.
Looks like connecting to the housing will be easy as they already hade
some bosses that some mounting plates can be bolted to. We will just
respline some old axle shafts to try it with and run the VW brakes etc. for
starters Just need to find another set for the front with the same
reduction. This should have the effect of taking some of the load off the
rather weak Sammy axles as well.
Should be a real cool project and I've been wanting to try it for some time.
The front will be a little harder to set up but we think we can do it if we
make the axles full time for starters.

Sounds interesting anyone have any more info about these

[ISUZUROVER]

Sounds interesting anyone have any more info about these

I have seen them before on a Kombi that a mate was doing up. They are a portal drop box that was fitted to the very early Kombi (split windscreen type - and maybe the model after). Probably a bit hard to find (split windscreen Kombi's are usually worth a bit).

As I recall they have forged axles so should be relatively strong, but the axles aren't huge, and they only came with a 1300/1400 motor back then.

[N*A*M]

yes they are kombi portals but they only use two gears in the drop-boxes so they have to turn backwards.

i looked at trying to get some of these because they are a good match for a suzuki (size and width). try searching for a place in australia called wolfsburg (or variations wulfsburg/wolfsberg/wulfsberg) as they specialise in the early kombis. by early, i'm talking 1950s post war.

damo has done a bit of research also and we talked about how he was going to deal with the reverse rotation issue. too bad i can't remember what he said! he has a blown up diagram of the rear axles.

[bj on roids]

these are incredibly small and super weak looking. A guy in brisbane runs them on his kombi and has 33" tyres they are off early buses, the guy in brissy who runs them is someone Alder, i could probably get a number if anyone is interested they are hardcore kombi blokes. the portals are from early VW buses, and i know that Liam from Bigballs has put some thought into this as i saw him mention it about a year or two ago (maybe more) so its certainly not new but interesting!!

[cplux]

I looked into these a little while back, when i posted about turning a hilux axle upside down for a high pinion, since then however I have sourced 2 4.88 high pinion diffs and currently have these front and rear. I wasnt sure of models, but am still keen to find out more if anyone has any info.

Craig

[Dozoor]

I think just pre 1960 nam , Way back they used them on baja bugs ,and class 8 , buggys in off road racing, they are from what they call a swing axle setup, If anyone is familar with these some guys used to mount them not so much striaght up and down on the bug things but in a layed back sort of fashion giving them a bit more clearance and adding a little length to the travel ,and the bonus of reduction for the bigger tires.
Ha Bj you think some axles are weak in the spline ,the axles they used with these just had a flat section at the transaxle end errrr