[Mike K]

Early Land Rovers have a weird system up until 1951 . There is a free wheel clutch on the front transfer case drive to the front axle. Basically the vehicle is in 4X4 mode permanently but the clutch only engages and provides drive under certain conditions ie when accelerating under load in muddy off road driving. Its great in theory but as with many of these drawing board ideas they found out it had major drawbacks. Driving up/down steep hills you would lose the 4x4 effect just when you needed it . Driving in reverse, you pulled a ring in the floor and doing this would lock the clutch in drive but this lead to other problems if you left the clutch locked . They ditched the whole idea and changed over the tried and proven conventional methods