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The K And K Mower or The Jeep Mower Bar

• CATEGORIES: Advertising & Brochures, Documents, Features • TAGS: This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

UPDATE: I’d never seen this brochure before finding it on eBay. This is part of what was a vast vintage jeep doc and toy collection in New England. I’ve bought a few cool things from him. 

As for a date on this four-page brochure, I’d say, given the patent date of 1948, that this brochure might have also been printed in 1948, especially given the CJ-2A. My guess is that Mr. Keyser didn’t make enough money to warrant any future reproductions of it. But, that’s only a guess.

While I’ve always called this a K and K mower (that’s the manufacturer), the brochure and data tag describes it as a Jeep Mower Bar (see pics at very bottom).

1948-k-and-k-mower-brochure1-lores 1948-k-and-k-mower-brochure2-lores 1948-k-and-k-mower-brochure3-lores

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 17, 2019: In February of 1948 Allan Keyser filed a patent for a side mower. It appears this became the design for the K And K Manufacturing Company’s Mower as seen in the brochures at bottom. You can view other early mowing apparatuses here. Interesting that this came out of Colorado. I wouldn’t have guessed it.

“This invention relates to a mower attachment for the presently popular small, four-wheel drive, automotive vehicles popularly known as jeeps, and has for its principal object the provision of means whereby a mower bar can be quickly and easily attached to, or detached from, the vehicle so that it will be easily visible and easily controlled by the driver of the vehicle.

Another object of the invention is to provide highly efficient means whereby the angle of attack of a mower bar may be adjusted to suit the desires of the user and the requirements of the particular crop being harvested.”

1948-02-04-kayser-mower-patent-k-and-k1 1948-02-04-kayser-mower-patent-k-and-k2

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Cutlas Manufacturing History

• CATEGORIES: Features • TAGS: , This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

UPDATE 3: Added an Automatic hub example shared by Seth (at bottom)

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Originally Posted April 28th, 2017:

UPDATE 2: Niels shared a photo of his rare Cutlas key that can be used to spin the screws of the Power-Lock Hub.

UPDATE: 1) Well, it seems I forgot to read through this and edit it (I murdered the title for example) 2) The ending of the post has changed, thanks to Paul spotting an ad in the 1976 issue of Four Wheeler Magazine.

cutlas-power-lock-brochure-lores

This is a Cutlas brochure for the company’s first hub, the Power-Lock.

In January of 1958, James Russell Lloyd, who up to that point had been president of the Free-Lock Company in Denver, filed a patent for a new type of hub on behalf of a company called the Cutlas Tool and Manufacturing Company out of Lyons, Illinois. At the time, Lloyd was still based in Denver (according to the patent filing), so what his relationship was with the Cutlas and Free-Lock companies at that time isn’t clear.

cutlass-power-lock-hub-patent

Patent was awarded in January of 1962.

Unlike the Free-Lock hubs, which relied on a rotating center piece to engage and disengage the hubs, the Cutlas hub had two rotating screws that had to be spun to engage and disengage the hubs.

In May of 1958, Lloyd copyrighted the term Power-Lock Free Wheeling Hub, a name which the hubs would be known as from then onward. Here are some photos:

cutlas-powerlock-hub-box

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The Free-Lock Corporation and Their Hubs

• CATEGORIES: Advertising & Brochures, Features • TAGS: , , This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

UPDATE VII: A set of NOS Free-Lock hubs included documentation stating that by December of 1973 Free-Lock had become a “Quality Division” of Dualmatic Products Company. So, I believe this suggests that Free-Lock was acquired by Dualmatic, so now the questions are 1) when did this happen and 2) why didn’t Dualmatic use the branding sooner than circa 1970 (there was a gap between the end of Free-Lock in 1959 and the re-emergence of the brand circa late 1960s or early 1970s).

UPDATE VI: I located a set of Free-Lock hub instructions that are a pre-view for a later set of near identical Dualmatic instructions. This is clear documentary evidence that Dualmatic was linked to Free-Lock.

UPDATE V: I recently packed many of my father’s tools to bring them back to Prosser. I was a regular user of them when working on my bicycles, then my jeeps. So, I thought I knew them pretty well. That is why I was so surprised and did a double take when I removed this tool from a drawer and read the name stamped on it: FREE-LOCK WRENCH …

What??? Where’d that come from? I once asked Dad about Free-Lock hubs, but he didn’t know anything about them. So, I don’t know how he obtained it.

Anyway, given the primitive nature of it, I’d have to guess it was a first generation version of the wrench. As seen below, a second, more elegant curved-design with a better branding stamp was likely introduced after this version.

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Here’s a reminder of the other version of the Free Lock Wrench:
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UPDATE IV (From February 12, 2017): This page contains two later model Free-Lock hubs that resemble Selectro hubs. My theory is that Free-Lock might have evolved into the Selectro Company: http://www.ewillys.com/2019/07/08/selectro-husky-dualmatic-overview/

UPDATE III: Thanks to Steve, we’ve discovered an additional version. It is now number 5, which seems to be an evolutionary step between 4 & 6.

UPDATE II: Thanks to Frank Day and his grandfather Merton, who saved this rare piece, here is a scan of an eight page brochure related to the Free-Lock corporation. 

free-lock-corp-large-brochure-lores1 free-lock-corp-large-brochure-lores2 free-lock-corp-large-brochure-lores3

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Thor Products & White Automotive (Whitco)

• CATEGORIES: Features • TAGS: , This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

UPDATE II: Dinesh obtained these Thor-Automatic looking hubs, but on the cover they read Allstate Power Matic rather than Thor. I suspect they are Thor hubs rebranded for Allstate. Here are some pics:

thor-allstate-branded-hubs2 thor-allstate-branded-hubs1

Here is a the interior portion of a set of Thor hubs:

thor-hubs-richard

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UPDATE (May 24, 2021): The October 1963 issue of Four Wheeler Magazine include this Thor-designed product to make shifting the transfercase more convenient. It moves the shifter from the passenger-side of the transmission to the driver’s side. I imagine there are few, if any, of these shifters out there.

1963-10-fourwheelermag-thor-shifter-ad2

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Originally published April 9, 2017:

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More information on some of these companies can be found here: http://www.ewillys.com/2019/07/08/selectro-husky-dualmatic-overview/


White Manufacturing Co. (also known as White Automotive and Whitco over time) was started in the late 1950s by Richard T, Bingman and partners. The company progressed at a modest level making, among other things, aluminum floral display stands. Eventually, White allied with Kaiser and began making tops. White filed for incorporation in 1959. One of the company’s earliest products was a white soft top for jeeps.

The next year, in 1960, Richard T. Bingham filed a patent for a pair of locking hubs. One set would automatically shift into gear when it sensed the axles were being powered (i.e., when the transfercase was shifted into four wheel drive). The second set of hubs added a dash-mounted button to allow for control of the hubs from the driver’s seat (assuming I have interpreted the patent correctly!).

The interesting thing is that Bingham never assigned the patents to the White Automotive Company. Instead, the patents and hubs ended up being used by Thor Products, which also operated out of Colorado Springs (though sometimes the address is Manitou Springs, a small town just west of Colorado Springs).

thor-automotive-logoThis suggests that Bingham had some time of relationship with Thor, but his exact connection to Thor isn’t known at this time (my guess is that it was a subsidiary or sister company of White).

1. The Thor auto-matic hub patent vs. the finished device:

thor-auto-matic-hub-patentthor-auto-matic-hub.jpg
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The Huffman Hub Company of Albuquerque, NM

• CATEGORIES: Features • TAGS: , This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

UPDATE IV: Well how about this …. There was an early Huffman hub that didn’t have the fancy ‘weapon-looking’ topper (as seen in the pics below). Instead, a cylindrical key was supplied to help select whether the hub was engaged or not. This ad is from the September 1962 issue of Four Wheeler Magazine.

1962-09-four-wheeler-magazine-huffman-hub-lores

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UPDATE III (May 17, 2020): In September of 1964 the Huffman Hub company posted this full-page ad in Four Wheeler Magazine —

1964-09-four-wheeler-huffman-hubs-ad-lores

September 1964 Four Wheeler Magazine

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(UPDATE II: Finally got a look at the 1967 article about Floyd Huffman that appeared in the August 20, 1967, issue of the Albuquerque Journal (pg 28):
1967-08-20-albuquerque-journal-huffman-hub-company

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