Toy vehicle with four-wheel drive

Claim 1

A toy wheeled vehicle comprising in combination, an elongated chassis, having a pair of parallel side plates, a pair of parallel axles extending transversely through bearing holes in said side plates of said chassis and spaced longitudinally therealong adjacent opposite ends of said chassis, pairs of wheels affixed respectively to opposite ends of both said axles, and a motor mounted on said chassis which comprises an inertia type flywheel supported on a shaft intermediately between said axles in bearing holes in said side plates and interengaging gear trains mounted respectively between the shaft of said fly-wheel and both axles to produce a unidirectional four-wheel drive for said vehicle, the improvement comprising mounting the gears of said trains upon shafts extending between bearing holes in said side plates disposed substantially along straight lines between the bearing holes for the axles of said wheels and shaft of said flywheel, and including in each of said gear trains, gear throw-out mechanism operable upon one gear of each train automatically to disengage the same from driving connection with other gears in said trains when any of said wheels are stopped from rotating while said flywheel is still rotating and thereby prevent injury to said gear trains, said throw-out mechanism comprising opposite pairs of short slots in said side plates of said chassis supporting the shafts of said one gear of each train, the slots for the shafts of the said throw-out gears being at angles to each other respectively in said side plates.