Sawubona, truth-seekers and wallet-watchers. Ralph and Justin here, standing in the middle of the Benoni strip yard with two identical Komatsu PC400-6 final drives on the bench: Left bench: genuine Komatsu OEM final drive, 9 800 hours, pulled from a low-abuse coal loader. Price from Vikfin: R48 000. Right bench: brand-new Chinese aftermarket copy bought by a customer who “saved” R28 000 up-front. Ran 2 410 hours. Now looks like it lost a fight with a blender. We’ve stripped,

Howzit, legends. Ralph here from the Benoni yard. Right now I’ve got three final drives on the bench: one that came in yesterday completely seized, one that’s leaking like a politician’s promise, and one that’s perfect inside despite 14 000 hours. All three are from 30–40 tonne machines. All three could have been saved for pocket money. In the last 18 months we’ve sold 87 final drives out of these two yards. Every single failure story starts with one (or more) of the same sev