We have to qualify the video above that you’re about to watch right off the bat by telling you that this is not an official ARB video. It’s not a bad piece of video footage, and the producer of the video has done a pretty good job at making a comparison between a Jeep with open differentials in its axles and a similar Jeep with ARB Air Lockers in both axles.
It looks like a day out with the local Jeep club, shooting photos and video for the fun of it all, turned into a challenge between these two Jeep owners, which led to the comparison of open differentials and locking differentials. No matter how the day began, it’s obvious that at one point, it turned into a shoot-out in the mud.
The setting for this contest was a muddy hill. By the looks of it in the video, the hill is not all that tall or steep, but the real key here is that the hill is coated with a slick, slimy, greasy mud. That’s the worst kind. It sticks to everything like glue and turns normally good off-road tires into nothing more than traction-less balls of goop.
This short video shows the difference in how the two Jeeps handled the hill and what a difference the ARB Air Lockers made. The first Jeep is a Wrangler TJ equipped with 33-inch tires (no brand or tread pattern obvious) and open differentials. The second Jeep to tackle the hill is a Wrangler JK with 35-inch tires (again, no other information available) and a set of ARB Air Lockers. Watch the video above to see how things turn out.