I’m looking to get hold of a full set of frame pivot bearings for my Patrol so that I have them on hand if/when they’re needed. For all of them, the reasonably priced options seem to be either normal type bearings in stainless steel, or max bearings in plain steel.

Any bearing experts care to advise which would be the better of the two? I’m pretty careful when washing my bike, do ride in wet-ish conditions sometimes but rarely when it’s pissing it down.

Thanks.

I asked Keith @ Banshee about this and he said not to use stainless steel bearings because they aren’t as hard. I would recommend buying a tube of XHP222 marine grease, popping off the seals and then packing them absolutely full, as all bearings contain far too little grease for the minimal rotation that happens in bike frames.

Enduro Max are designed for suspension pivots where the loads are relatively high and the rotational movement is pretty small

My old Demo 8 has more bearings than a wayward compass, and Spesh specified whether they should be max or not. From what I could see, the bearings that did not undergo much rotation were max bearings, the ones that rotated more weren’t. I think the point is that between them the balls should roll over all the races, so there isn’t a “dead spot” where crud can build up. Or something.

I’ve heard mixed opinions about this – yes, stainless bearings are not as hard as regular ones, but quite often when I do an autopsy on an old set of non-stainless bearings, I find a fair bit of corrosion inside, which softer or not, will certainly have ended their life earlier. I think it’s all down to where you ride – if you spend a lot of time very wet, then stainless bearings may well last much longer due to their natural corrosion inhibiting properties.

Personally, I’m still using Enduro Max bearings and, as stated above, always repack them with thick-ass, waterproof agricultural grease (Lucas “Red n Tacky” here). It doesn’t really matter if they barely turn afterwards – for linkage bearings, it’s far more important that they are full to the brim with grease rather than free-running and their life expectancy will be increased accordingly.

One thing that I’ve seen quite often is incorrect bearings fitted to linkages, where the LBS have used regular, off the shelf bearings, instead of specific max-load ones. In one particular bike, they fitted cheap-ass 2RS (i.e. fully sealed) bearings on an Intense which has grease ports to inject grease into the bearing itself. Obviously, the injected grease couldn’t get through the seals and the bearings lasted less than 6 months. Grrr.

One other tip – regularly service them – just whip off the bearing seals, clean ’em out and regrease them. The magic trick here is to rotate them a bit (hard to avoid anyway when greasing) so a different part of the bearing will be in use after reassembly. About an hour’s work for me on a typical VPP bike and I do this once or twice through the winter.

If you are buying bearings I’ve just had great service from Wych Bearings:
http://www.wychbearings.co.uk/bike_bearings.html

If you are buying bearings I’ve just had great service from Wych Bearings

Definitely second this – fast shipping and excellent and helpful response to questions.

Thanks boys, I’ll go for some plain steel max bearings all round. Been looking at Wych and Aire bearing shops online – both have what I need at fair prices.