Dave here: Seth and Roger both shared links to his Facebook post showing a Cutlas Automatic Hub, which is a rarity to see in the wild. That got me thinking that I’d never done a post about the different, early attempts at creating auto-engaging hubs, which appeared to generally be a failure (none ever caught on).
WARN INDUSTRIES Mid 1950s:
I believe the first commercial attempt at an automatic hub was Warn’s hub by that very name, the Warn Automatic hub. This hub appeared as early as 1954 in this brochure (from this post), Willys Motors was promoting the hub as of October of 1954.
Hugo Vidal, through his Brazilian company, AVM, also produced the Automatic Model, an example shown below (from this post):
According to Hugo, the technology was never perfected and customers had problems, so eventually the hubs were pulled from the market.
THOR AUTOMOTIVE early-mid 1960s:
The next production hub with claims to being automatic was the Thor Industries Automatic hub, advertising for which appeared in the early-mid 1960s in Four Wheeler Magazine. While the company’s Electro Hub was sort of automatic, in that you could electrically engage it from the dash, the compass Automatic Hub claimed to be fully automatic. Over the years I’ve seen a few of these, but again this hub didn’t become popular, though I don’t have any reports as to why.
This Thor ad appeared in the July 1963 issue of Four Wheeler Magazine (front this post):
Ad from the July 1963 issue of Four Wheeler Magazine
Here is an example of the hub. Allstate also private labeled this hub, as can be seen at the top of this post.
CUTLAS ENGINEERING early-mid 1970s:
Around 1960, Cutlas advertised an “Automatic” hub, but it wasn’t actually an automatic hub, but rather it had ‘automatic axle positioning’, which I believe meant that it made engaging the axles easier (so don’t be fooled by this advertising)!
However, by the early to mid 1970s Cutlas engineers figured out a way to create automatic hubs, filing a patent in 1972 (Unclear is this is the exact product below or not), introducing the hub that got me thinking about this post. Both of these images are at the bottom of this Cutlas post.
I would be curious to find out “how” the electric switch was “making an electrical connection” thereby “controlling” the hubs of a “spinning wheel”? Maybe the first showing of “A-I” ??? I would guess… that water and/or contaminants played a vital role in their “short life”. Can you imagine a circuit “cutting in and out malfunctioning” as you are driving?
The issue that I always had with my Lockomatic hubs was that if I didn’t physically lock them in, they only locked when power was applied. Would be decent on road in crappy conditions or for work around the farm, but 4 wheeling it could get you into trouble pretty quickly going down a steep hill and your front end unlocks on you.
Lockomatic hubs engage for when you get in an unintended spot. Lets say “oops”. If you need to continue needing 4wd then you get out and lock the hubs. It is not meant to run in auto. Use them incorrectly and you won’t be happy.