A New Kind of Portal

[5GENIDN]

Import cast units going on sale to the public today with a June delivery according to IG.

There's a reason people don't think portals do well at high speeds. Cast iron housing have caused overheating issues in Mercedes (and other) designs.

We can look at a bolt-on application that has a steel housing, Werewolf. If you ask around you can find out how they do at speed. Something I find interesting is there was a pretty small oil sump on their straight cut gear set, but when they switched to helical they increased the sump volume astronomically. They also went to a tapered roller bearing on the idler gear. I wonder why this is.. According to Tyler his changes are housing material, adding material "where it needed some" (presumably where he broke his 7075 stuff since he was asking how to weld it on FB) and vent location. The internals are supposed to be the same and you're not supposed to be able to tell from the outside that it's different. This leads me to believe there are no meaningful changes to address heat, which has killed bolt on products in the past.

For the sake of argument I will assume Tyler is aware of all of this and made adjustments. It's still crazy to release a first article to the public. He said his fallout with Tibus happened gradually over the last six months, and he said Tibus was unwilling to change the product. What else am I supposed to conclude here other than his development timeframe has been less than that. If you've ever worked on castings before, you know that's aggressive.

He talks so much BS about 74Weld so let's look at them as a development case study. Did Quinn start in a similar position to Tyler, trying to make improvements on an existing design? Yes. The glaring difference is he spent a decade working on these things and crated a product that could live in the most extreme conditions before he started selling stuff for people to drive on the street. In one of their videos they talk about getting 10k miles on a design, finding some issues, throwing that design away and starting at zero to get another 10k miles on the next revision before moving on to a BETA run of close industry friends as testers.

I also was able to talk to Quinn at KOH this year and when someone brought up price point, cast iron was not even on their list. He said they investigated castings over the past two years but are currently pursuing forgings because they found they could stick with aluminum for heat and weight, but be able to get a stronger product similar in cost to a casting. The tooling will just cost much more.

No matter what they end up going with, two years of investigating different manufacturing methods is something like four times as long as Tyler has even been working on portals. And let's be clear, working on here means installing not designing.

I follow and agree with everything you have said here..... I have just been trying to get Tyler to at least consider a redesign.... Forged would be far superior to cast. The heat dissipation is a major issue. Hell even the additional weight of cast steel would be severely limiting. But to just change the housing material with the same design (especially the helical) will be disastrous.

Just my opinion.... I guess we will see what plays out.

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[BigMeatsBronco]

Got a little clarification from Wolfgang Tibus

Finally , TRUTH.

 

[userdude]

I follow and agree with everything you have said here..... I have just been trying to get Tyler to at least consider a redesign.... Forged would be far superior to cast. The heat dissipation is a major issue. Hell even the additional weight of cast steel would be severely limiting. But to just change the housing material with the same design (especially the helical) will be disastrous.

Just my opinion.... I guess we will see what plays out.

The way that Quinn has talked about the forgings is that it's a one-shot, better get it right, $200k+ investment. And he also told me he didn't think that would dramatically lower the price (I kind of felt like he was saying $2-3k maybe). Maybe China is a quarter that cost, but that's still a lot of cash to pony up if you're not sure of the product design. Certainly sounds like the makings of a poor product roll out.

 

[DYak]

Buddy can't even show us a physical product and is already pressing print on run 2

I remember not too long ago watching Robby Gordon live stream, boots on the ground, from overseas as he set up his Speed UTV supply chain. Even just seeing it online gave me anxiety. It would have been pretty hard for him to get after it like that if all his time was spent at events.

 

[mpeugeot]

Can you pass my quiz?

This is a first semester class quiz on gear design... These are a rather simple bevel cut gear... Helical gears are considerably more complicated....

I guess I am just trying to say I do know a little about gears... and I would NOT run a helical cut gear in a portal... I know Mercedes changed from straight cut to helical for the Unimog... But that was for marketing in a low powered slow moving vehicle.... Tibus just followed their lead. Good machinist but not an automotive engineer. Tyler is just following suit with NO understanding of the why....

I can't pass it, but my computer can... Especially if I am allowed to use an AI language model.

 

[mpeugeot]

Watching him struggle to comprehend this concept was painful. But at the same time, it shows that he's not a student of the game. There were something like 20 vehicles on 74Weld stuff at KOH with portal fronts and non-portal rears.

I knew exactly why you asked it... Which is why I ended up clarifying the question for him.

 

[mpeugeot]

a 10 degree helical cut will roughly convert about 10 ft/lbs of torque to heat on a bronco... Very rough top of the head guesstimate... You have a 1.5% power being converted to lateral loading. You can not create or destroy that energy, you can only change it... Therefore it is changed first to plastic deformation and then to heat.

AND this is not even accounting for the bearings that must resist that lateral loading by design.... can in no way be built as strong (as a straight roller bearing) in the same size package. To get them anywhere close to the strength the package/housing is going to have to increase to what? maybe 8 or 9 inch width? to fit a MUCH larger bearing pack that would be of equal strength.

A tapered roller bearing should have little difficulty with the thrust/lateral loading, but Han's tapered roller bearings aren't cheap, you feel me?

 

[mpeugeot]

@tmason10 if your going cast iron I would at least make some promotional cook wear. Think about sending 74Weld a broncbuster skillet for christmas, you could serve it up hot!

Come on now... Cast steel and cast iron aren't the same thing... Steaks taste much better in seasoned cast iron. You know this.

 

[mpeugeot]

In this case, I think different ends of the pole are Tyler versus Nate (Snacktime) or Alan (BigMeatsBronco). Slick and friendly but misleading versus sometimes ornery but well informed and informative.

I disagree, Nate and Alan have never seemed Ornery... Even when I may have deserved some flak for over sharing knowledge.

 

[mpeugeot]

Say I buy one of your first import portal sets, it gets installed and I'm super happy. You sell out of the first 10 and everyone is pumped so you put an order in for 20 more. Five months in, I give you a call saying a gearbox seized up on the highway. Let's say hypothetically iron doesn't shed heat as well as aluminum and you didn't do anything to the design to account for that. I'm livid and threatening to sue. You're 30 sets deep on these things and there might be a serious problem. What do you do?

Shoot the hostage?

 

[Snacktime]

The way that Quinn has talked about the forgings is that it's a one-shot, better get it right, $200k+ investment. And he also told me he didn't think that would dramatically lower the price (I kind of felt like he was saying $2-3k maybe). Maybe China is a quarter that cost, but that's still a lot of cash to pony up if you're not sure of the product design. Certainly sounds like the makings of a poor product roll out.

Completely different process from sand casting iron. Literally you can 3d print a part, sand cast it and pour in iron. I think the cast iron part is awesome! There are negatives due to weight and material properties but for cost cutting it's a legitimate solution. I don't have enough background in cast iron to really dig into design elements. I definitely don't have the understanding of what change need to be made to reduce manufacturing stress from casting and the unique design properties to increase the housings strength. This is one of those long lost art forms that China and India still possess.

Look at auto casting for old transfercases and transmission, they changed almost yearly chasing design issues. Cast iron is an art as much as it's material science.

I find cast iron extremely interesting, I love expensive knife steel so I might be weird about this subject.

 

[Altitude]

just a classless and uncaring person - you know the type that only buys mud flaps for their front tires....

I took this comment as a personal attack.

 

[JerryG]

I took this comment as a personal attack.

I am sorry, I was not looking to personally attack anyone. I balance you out- I only have flaps on my rear as my front flaps won't fit any more since going to larger tires. Nice ride!

 

[Snacktime]

I feel like this is the best place for this gem. 74Weld has had issues, just not everything is public or upfront. Not like we got the low down on what actually happens.

 

[SierraBronco]

I feel like this is the best place for this gem. 74Weld has had issues, just not everything is public or upfront. Not like we got the low down on what actually happens.

Was that the upright on the portal or the factory UCA having the issue? I couldn’t quite tell

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