Don't take anything personally, I was just curious, as were most reading this thread.
I've built vehicles within the past few years that have used NOTHING but name brand parts (lights,winches,lockers,snorkel,bumpers), and have wound up with a $10k rig that has $25k in accessories. Lol
Just exploring options. My current builder is worth about $2k (on a good day, it IS a rover...), so it's hard to justify $1000+ for a lightbar, or even $1100 for a locker. Name brand snorkel was almost $600. I recently bought a knock off for $80 that literally fit BETTER than the last Safari snorkel that I had installed.
Competition is a good thing, and shows what a gigantic margin there is on the name brand parts.
Aside from all of that, I do have a background in manufacturing (just not in China). I know what it costs to have tooling made (and by that I mean Molds for castings), and at least over here in the states, it's not cheap at all. I've had simple plastic parts made, where the tooling cost $150k and the parts were only worth about $10.
So that's why I was suspect. I do know from first hand experience that the Chinese like to purchase used tooling from the US, and then use it to manufacture over there. Since these are the old style lockers, perhaps the Chinese have gotten their hands on it?
And you mention the lights (I assume from the other thread), I still find it really hard to believe that those are "knock offs." It's not an easy process to reverse engineer something like that, and have it come out so nicely.
