Power distributing mechanism

Claim 1

A power distributing mechanism for a vehicle of a front and rear wheel driving type wherein a driving system is designed to transmit power through a transmission to front and rear wheels wherein the front wheels are designed to be steered, comprising: a shaft for the rear wheels adapted to connect to a driving mechanism; a shaft for the front wheels coaxially adjacent to the shaft for the rear wheels; a driving rotator having outer teeth and connected to the outer periphery of the shaft for the rear wheels; a driven rotator having outer teeth and connected to the shaft for the front wheels; a forcing means for elastically forcing the driven rotator toward the driving rotator; a cylindrical intermediate member disposed around both rotators and having inner teeth engageable with the outer teeth of the respective rotators with circumferential spaces therebetween, said circumferential spaces enable a predeterminable scope of rotation between said front and rear rotators; braking means for applying a braking force to the intermediate member; said rotators both being provided at the end surface portions facing each other with correspondingly tapered projections for mutual engagement, the tapering on said correspondingly tapered projections in mutual engagement being operative to induce a parting force on each other responsive to a differing rotary speed of said driving and driven rotators; and means responsive to said parting force for causing said driven rotator to move axially away from said driving rotator and said intermediate member, while keeping said engagement between said intermediate member and said driving rotator unchanged, whereby said driven rotator is automatically caused to become disengaged from said driving rotator through said intermediate member when said driving rotator and said driven rotator are rotating at differing speed.