Portal axles require significant effort to allow for that increased leverage and to deal with the forces generated safely. The inverted dropped trailer axle could be used if the same design approach is used. Doesn't seem worth the effort to me when there are many other, more important challenges in building a trailer that will work and last and the gain over a straight axle is so small.
You make sense and I do agree that there are more important things to focus on. However, without sounding argumentative, 3" is 3". When it comes to gaining some ground clearance, that's worth some effort in my book. Now, how to do it right and safely, that's where I'll need to make sure I do more research in order to do so.
If you decide to use the air bag approach let me know. We have the bags and the top brackets.
http://www.adventuretrailers.com/homebuilder.html
My advise would be not to use stock top brackets as they are not strong enough and can bend and tear.
The M416 is going to be pretty much stripped so I would not have used the stock brackets regardless. And, yes, I've looked at your "bag set-up" with envy. Once I get things cleaned up to a point I can start fabricating, I'll be looking at them as an option. Right now, I'm looking at using some take-offs of my FJC as possible suspension components. I've got the stock front coilovers, rear coils and shocks as well as the stock LCA's that I'm toying with using in place of the leaf springs. Its probably way more practical to just clean up and re-build/use the leaf springs but sometimes I like doing things a bit different...
