For giggles I went and got a couple of them faktory like new feom (fabricated oem) housings. Thre them on 2 dead rf board 2500s for giggles. Did some tests. While majority held up to normal wear extreme dropping the plastic cracked significantly. Water in standard rain was ok though submerging had issues with the plastic seating with the rubber seals internally. Some of the housings were too tight on the inner lining causing strain on the internal guts or back plate showing signs of stress on the housing sides.
For basic ham use they'd be cool. But I wouldn't depend on these for fire use or public safety.
Maybe and thats a large maybe a parks worker cleaning trash bags and bathrooms but wouldn't suggest it as anything government is considered mission critical.
On a average notice the button rubbers are too long inside and must be trimmed on some which causes buttons to easily press as well as the tightness of the internal plastic sealing against backplate. This could be issue of ptt, emergency depress when not needed.
It was a for fun deal since one of my fire fighters decided to remove a used, perfectly ok housing from a 2500 for a fancy lime green look.
After endless emergency depresses from sitting and moving around driving this resulted in questions thus dealing with that issue.
There was only 1 market I was aware of in the oem realm for impact yellow and lime green oem housings down in south America where policia federal in one particular country had contracted for a handful of lime green which wasn't many and rest impact yellow.
Anything else is that use at own risk. If it sits on a desk ok but you have question once you're gone or so and so changes hands in jobs will that unit end up in field as a loaner or stand in for someone walking into a fire?
If its at home, personal, non mission critical have at it. Government issued, owned or used on mission critical have your radio techs mainly admin end approve it. I doubt they will as I sure as hell wouldn't.
