Steve contacted me the other day about dually adapters. He didn’t know much of the history behind them and was wondering if I knew anything (which i didn’t). So, Steve dove in and all this research is courtesy of his efforts.

The Dually Modification is pretty rare. Though JC Whitney sold modification kits for Willys & Jeeps as did Dualamatic, and others might have, too. I can’t say whether the vehicles shown following the patents used some kind of factory set up, some other aftermarket kit, or a custom solution.

There is a discussion thread at the CJ-2Apage forum that shows images of a wheel adapter setup.

Here are the two patents discovered by Steve

1) Max E. Pappaport Dually patent:
Steve writes, ” I did a little research on the dual rear wheel adapters I have. They are cast iron, one piece construction. They even have 5 left threaded bolts and 5 right threaded. Looks like an after WWII patent which was applied for in 1947 by Max E Rappaport, Minneapolis, Minn. In the written portion of the patent he notes that you can still use your hub caps, and that if you don’t want duals, you can use these just to extend the wheel base. The first several paragraphs indicate his objectives with the patent which are interesting.

There is a Max E Pappaport who lived from 1908 to 1965. There is also a reference to a Max E Rappaport being president of NAPCO in the late 60s. I sent an inquiry but no response. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the castings were stuck away in an old room.
This link is the patent for my duals and an image of the design can be view below (here’s a link to a download of a PDF version of the patent). Good pictures and illustrations there. Figure 2,3,&4 are the parts I have. Figure 1 is the assembled parts.

And here are some pics of Steve’s parts:



2) Floy Fox Dually Patent:
Steve writes, “Here is a patent by Floy Fox from Oklahoma in 1981 (Here’s a PDF version) A different thought process as some one might be able to weld these in their home shop vs the cast iron ones I have. I think patents last 20 years but there is a reference to 1998 in this patent. This is similar to the set at the cj2a website but not exactly the same. It is interesting that no deminsions are given, but I suppose if they did it would lock them into that one design, instead of a concept.”
Here are some images from this patent.