Portal axle

A portal axle (or portal gear lift) is an off-road vehicle suspension and drive technology in which the axle tube or the half-shaft is offset from – usually above – the center of the wheel hub and driving power is transferred to each wheel through a simple gearbox built onto each hub. It has two advantages over a non-offset axle: first, ground clearance is increased, particularly beneath the low-slung differential housing of the main axles; second, any hub reduction gearing allows the axle half shafts to deliver the same power but at reduced torque (by using higher shaft speed), which reduces load on the axle crown wheel and differential.

The portal gear configuration is also sometimes called a drop gear or drop gearset configuration (which, despite its similarity to the term dropped axle, produces the opposite effect).

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