They are very similar. See below.
Identical mechanism to the Craftsman pro.
The Armstrong version is an 88 Tooth and the Craftsman ratchet is an 84T ratchet. So they are not identical. The 84T craftsman is similar to the 84T gearwrench however. When these ratchets were first sold (the 84T craftsman ones), there were several that were shipped with mismatched pawls and gears (88T pawls or gear with a 84T pawl or gear) that caused them not to work. I believe the mechanisms don't even interchange because one of the small redesigns they did from the gearwrench 84T ratchet was to make the gear sit slightly lower, thus making the armstrong 88T rebuild kits not fit.
We had an Armstrong rep on here several years ago, and he said that they designed this ratchet for Sears, so it's no surprise.
Yeah, kind of. They are a slight modification of the 84T gearwrench ratchet. So they didn't design a brand new ratchet, just changed the cover plate from being held in by a snap ring to held in by screws (which is a lot nicer) and the handle is fairly similar to the armstrong ratchets.
Furthermore, the 84T craftsman and gearwrench ratchets have well over 100 or so cases (on here alone) of locking up and not working. Go read amazon reviews, sears reviews, etc. There are a lot of cases of the 84T ratchets failing. The 88t ratchets seem to be much more reliable. I've written quite a bit on this in the past, comparing the failure rates of the two models, and decided that because two different factories (one in the US making the craftsman pro and one in Taiwan making the gearwrench) produce these ratchets with a high lock up rate, there is something slightly off in the design of them.
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