No, I'm not gonna go into some dissertation about how Warn invented the locking hub. But I will tell you about this particular hub. Not it's design, just how it came into my possession.

I think it was 2003. Christian conned me into buying a $1,000 '73 J2000 he found online. I told the owner we were on our way to pick it up, from over 1,000 miles away. The truck was in Oregon, we were in southern California. Anyway, the truck had a closed knuckle Dana 44 front axle. From the knuckles out it's pretty much the a same as a Dana 25. Not exactly the most revered front axle, but it had these cool and funky Dualmatic locking hubs. Eventually the Jeep made it home and I wheeled it with these oddball hubs. They were kind of a pain in the ass to engage since I usually needed a screw driver to release the twist and flip tabs. Shortly after I cut the axle out of my J2000 and installed Rockwell 2.5-ton axles. The funky hubs and Dana 44 sat in the side yard of my rented house for nearly a year. When I moved, the axle and hubs came with me and were parked in the dirt next to my new garage. A year or so later, I caught wind that Jim McGean at Dynatrac was working on a new locking hub design. I told him about the oddball hubs I had and he wanted to check one out. So I removed it and shipped it to Dynatrac. I eventually wanted it back but I didn't really care since I had no use for it. Jim deemed the design weak and a few months later the hub ended up lost/thrown out in a move. About that same time I realized I really wanted my hub back so I could put it on my Hot Rod Jeep. But it was too late, the hub was gone.
Later on I was bouncing around on IFSJA.org and someone posted that they needed the load leafs from a '73 J2000, well, along with the front and rear axles, I kept the leaf springs from my Rockwell converted truck. So I sent him the load leafs and asked if he a locking hub. As I recall, he didn't, but another member near the east coast did. So he shipped it to me and it sat in a small box until today. I pulled it out so I could finish putting together my Jeeps front axle. Funny thing was, I went to go look for bolts in my bolt bin and I found five of the original mounting bolts! I could tell they were from the original hub since they were painted olive drab.My front axle is now complete!