Manual differential lock-up

Claim 1

In a wheeled vehicle having a drive shaft, left and right wheel-tire assemblies, left and right axles connected to respective ones of the wheel-tire assemblies for delivering motive power thereto, and differential arranged to transmit power from the drive shaft to the axles; said differential comprising a carrier, an input gear carried by the drive shaft for rotation within the carrier, output side gears carried by individual axles for independent rotation within the carrier, a ring gear driven by the input gear for rotation within the carrier, a differential case secured to the ring gear for rotation therewith, and differential gears rotatably mounted on the differential case in meshed engagement with the output gears, whereby power is delivered to the output side gears from the case through the differential gears: the improvement comprising releasable means for adjustably locking one of the side gears to the differential case or unlocking said one side gear for free rotation relative to the differential case; said releasable locking means comprising a first series of clutch plates keyed to the differential case, and a second series of clutch plates keyed to the axle associated with said one side gear; the first and second clutch plates being interspersed so that adjacent plates can be frictionally engaged to form a driving connection from the differential case to said one side gear; a plural number of air cylinder units mounted on the carrier; each air cylinder unit comprising a piston, a piston rod, and a roller on the piston rod; said air cylinder units being arranged so that the rollers have pressure contact with an end one of the clutch plates to transmit an operating force thereto; an air pressure source; manually-operable valve means enabling pressurized air to flow from the source to the air cylinder units, or to flow from the air cylinder units to atmosphere; and a manually adjustable air pressure regulating means for varying the pressure of the air flowing from the source to the valve means, whereby the frictional forces existing between the clutch plates are varied to vary the amount of slippage between the plates when the air cylinder units are pressurized.