Don’t be fooled
I reached out to Henkel for some more details on the fakes. Of course, Henkel’s technical team recommended fully testing any suspicious adhesive to make sure that it performed as expected. That’s a fine solution for a production environment with fancy testing equipment ready to go, but what are average auto techs supposed to do?
“Visually, I believe that beyond the features of the bottle, identifying a proper batch code and ‘use by’ date on the back of the bottle would be [worth a] check,” says Michael Feeney, a lead application engineer at Henkel. “Additionally, they could ask for a certificate of analysis to the corresponding batch code to confirm it isn’t just a made-up batch code.”
Not sure where to start with that? Drop Henkel a line here if you think you’ve got a fake, and consider buying from another source next time.