The past few years have seen the beginning of a new industry – the production of cheap lockers coming out of China and India. These lockers either claim outright to be ARB Air Lockers or use patented ARB designs in breach of Australian and international law. Utilising ARB’s patented three-piece design, these lockers look legitimate on first inspection. However, a closer look reveals a distinctly rough surface finish and very poor overall condition of the entire diff assembly.While this is in part due to inferior machinery and manufacturing processes, of key importance is the use of extremely poor materials consisting mainly of case hardened mild steel. Case hardened mild steel is the cheapest form of steel to manufacture and produces a hardened outer surface. In terms of strength, the counterfeit lockers with case hardened mild steel measure in at 250 megapascals (MPa), while the genuine Air Locker comes in at 1200MPa – it is literally five times as strong.The attraction of the Chinese and Indian lockers is their cheapness in price for the end user, however these lockers are incredibly weak, untested, prone to breakdown and have absolutely no warranty, spare parts or back-up service. Ultimately, many of these counterfeit…