A relentless commitment to research and design, the use of quality materials, and an uncompromising approach to manufacturing have all contributed to the Air Locker’s success in over 100 countries worldwide.Designed and manufactured in Australia, ARB Air Lockers locking differentials will enhance the traction of your 4×4 in just about any terrain, whether it’s rock, clay, gravel, sand, snow or mud.Now with a state-of-the-art two piece design available right across the range, forged gears for the ultimate in strength and durability, and an industry-leading five year warranty, ARB Air Lockers are better built and better backed than ever before.Many people believe that a 4WD and traction go hand in hand… you can’t have one without the other. However, your vehicle’s standard (or open) differential is designed to allow each wheel to turn independently, thus eliminating binding during turns. Off road, this becomes a major burden as engine power will take the path of least resistance, which occurs at the wheels with little or no traction.Newer vehicles with limited slip differentials may offer some improvement, but more often you’ll find the slipping is not ‘limited’ enough to maintain forward progress. Automatic locking differentials also have their disadvantages. Aside from being noisy when disengaging, they can also upset the on-highway driving characteristics of your vehicle.
Features
In simple terms, traction is the resistance between your vehicle’s tyres and the ground which offers you, as the driver, control of the vehicle; no traction = no control.Drive is the delivery of torque and power; drive (with an appropriate amount of torque force) is what rotates our wheels and tyres against the track’s resistance.
Tyres, their tread pattern and construction are one of the most important factors to the performance for your 4WD. Your tyres are the final piece of the puzzle in transferring the engine’s energy to the track so that the car can move forward.Tyres, however, are only able to move the car forward if it least one tyre can gain traction to the track surface and that tyre is also receiving enough drive (torque) from its respective differential.
The fact is, you will never be able to control the traction of the track surface, but you can control the type of tyres, the foot-print of your tyres (air pressure) and whether your tyres receive drive or not. All these things will hugely improve the likeliness of finding and maintaining traction.If there is no traction on the surface, you can have 4 wheels spinning and little to no forward momentum. So the first steps to improving traction are:
A good set of all-terrain or mud-terrain tyres
Always adjusting your tyre pressure appropriate for the terrain of which you are driving on
Reducing tyre pressure (letting air out) increases the surface area that the tyre has in contact with the ground; more tyre on the ground means better load distribution and more track surface to get traction from. This is most important when driving on sand. The benefits of low tyre pressure can also be seen when navigating rocky terrain, where the tyres have an increased ability to shape themselves around objects on the track, helping us gain more traction.
Your 4×4 has a front differential and a rear differential; a differential is designed to distribute drive to either the left or right wheel on each axle.Delivering drive to just one side of the vehicle is what allows your left and right wheels to spin at different speeds, which is imperative for on road cornering.By design, a diff will rotate the wheel with the least traction. So, when we are travelling off road, if one wheel is suspended in the air or is sitting on a very slippery surface, the differential will only delivery drive to the wheel with no traction.This works against 4WDers because you can very easily find yourself in a situation where one wheel on the front axle and one wheel on the rear axle has little to no traction. In this situation, neither of the wheels with traction will receive drive.
A selectable differential locker is a full replacement differential which can be ‘locked’ by activating a switch from the driver’s seat.The locking function removes the differential’s usual capacity to split the drive left to right by binding the gears; this means that both wheels will always rotate at the same speed, until the locker is disengaged.
We’ve described the basics of how a standard differential works and why we need them on road, however, when it comes to 4WDing, it can cause issues when driving on uneven or muddy terrain, where it is common for one or more wheels to slip or become raised off the ground.The perfect time to engage a diff locker is when traversing low traction surfaces, whether they be slippery or overly uneven causing wheels to lift.Switching the differential to ‘locked’ will send equal drive to both wheels, meaning that both the wheel off the ground and the one firmly planted on the ground will have equal drive, allowing the wheel with the most traction to push you forward and continue on the track.
We need a locker to make effective use of all the traction available between our tyres and the surface of which we are driving on. Lockers give you the ability to take advantage of the traction that is available by supplying drive to all wheels.
The main benefit that an Air Locker has over an electronic-locker is its instant activation. By comparison to the majority of electronic lockers, an ARB Air Locker engages instantly and at any speed; furthermore, an ARB Air Locker has no operating speed limitations.Being able to engage your locker ‘on the fly’ means you don’t need to lose your momentum before tackling an obstacle.
Having an on-board air compressor has many advantages other than a way to activate Air-Lockers. On-board compressors are also perfect for inflating tyres, cleaning car components such as door seals and air filters, inflating air beds or for basically anything that needs compressed air. Having on-board air becomes very handy to have in your vehicle, especially considering that you don’t have to find space to pack it, nor do you need to pull it out and connect it to your battery every time you need to use it.