Hello. Anyone want to find out what the best bearings for MTB applications are?

Come in, make yourselves at home.

Thank all of you for the other thread on bearings, I hope you don't mind it too much it was my birthday present to myself.

Laughed so hard I almost pissed myself, in my own defence I figured since all of my threads get ripped to pieces and ruined I might as well enjoy myself.

However we are still left with the question on how do we determine, what are the best bearings to use in MTB applications?
Which bearings will last the longest and give the best value for money?

I have a radical if somewhat idiotic suggestion for this day and age, we that is to say STW and those of us that meet here! could investigate the situation for ourselves.
On the bright side since I have already done a lot of investigating of the subject we have my experience to fall back on, if we get stuck.

I believe that Performance bearings with cages if they are at reasonable prices and fully pregreased are the best bearings to run.
Firstly: because they are made of superior materials in terms of their construction of the races, balls or cages and also seals.
Secondly: because the pregreasing with the right grease makes them a lot more water and dirt resistant and less likely to fail.

I prefer the caged bearings because when I work the grease into the bearings by rotating them you end up with a layer of grease on the outside of the cage and another layer on the inside.

In my experience this makes it a lot harder for the water and dirt to get to the actual balls or inner part of the races and to wear them out prematurely.

This is the first test or experiment I suggest that we run it is not the only test we will need to do and is just the beginning if we want to truly understand what is required.

However this is one of the first things I did and a good place to start.
Is there any difference in the rate at which performance and budget bearings rust and does pregreasing the bearing make them last longer?

Type of bearing from left to right
Budget Enduro SKF (standard) SKF (pregreased)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNWUyVFkSEk

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Really?

🙄

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

You should have added a pregreased budget onto your list 😉

Oy Nick, you coming out for Curry in Huddersfield Sat night or what?

We can talk about bearings if you like.

what a bag of ****

For **** sake change the record. We get it you sell bearings!

you sell bearings

He doesn't, he only gives them away.

Let us research it and find out.

I am happy for other people to do this as well, you want proof I'm offering it to you.

STW would you rather argue or discover?

Kaesae's song

BTW That's really not how you pronounce Commencal you mong.

Molded oil bearings Tried these?

Going strong in some applications at work…your local bearing supplier like Brammer etc might even be able to get you some….:)

Honestly missed a lot of this, so let me ask without any irony do you sell bearings Kaesae? Do you do sets for 2004 Spec Enduro?

Email in profile. Cheers.

DAY 1

How much honey do you get through??! Does Winnie the Pooh live with you?

I've been refraining from posting for a long time…

However, as a civil engineer, can I point out that the corrosion rate for steel is pretty low when immersed in water.
Rust = iron oxide

What is that experiment trying to prove anyway?

Not sure the labels are aligned with the lid stoppers and 3in1 come on who uses that now adays?

Get some SS ones in there..what about zz? and Moulded oil as I suggested. How about giving them the LP hose test? What about grit?. How do the seals fair in the real world.? What does 4 bearings in honey jars tell us? How about manufacturer's data sheets…a high percentage of premature bearing failures are down to incorrect fitting..etc etc

i just ride a hardtail.

Unbelievable.

What tyres for bearing experiments?

DAY 2

For the underwater cyclist, these results will be quite a revelation.

SFB might be interested – afterall, he used to take his Rohloff swimming!

venus

That pic sums up the OP's grasp of engineering, chemistry and life in general.

I will be watching this experiment with keen interest as I always keep my new bearing in honey jars 2/5 full of water before I fit them into my hubs.

Not going to get dragged into this one. I am a genius according to Kael anyway, so I know it all to!
Must resist, must resist.

DAY 98

Bearings killed by drowning ! 😆

i 'lol'ed @ uplinks post

I take it this is your turn at returning us the favour of ammusing you …. I genuinely chuckled at this entire thread ….its better than the last one by miles !

I don't understand what the problem is here. I've got a few bearings in my bike and finding out ways to make them last longer/cheaper would surely be good.

Criticizing the experimental technique seems fair enough, but just generally being gratuitously luddite seems a bit, well, petty.

What am I missing?

why not put the blue sealed bearing in the jar with the blue lid, as a control like, otherwise we'll all be confused. also, was it clear honey, or that cloudy stuff with all bits in? is it the extra expensive honey, much better in bearings than the cheapo chinese honey i would think?

But surely the experiment is null & void due to weighting in your favour – ie. the Katec bearing has the BLUE lid.

Crivens

Wow. Even by kaesae's standards that is impressive. Mate, did you actually do EVEN THE SLIGHTEST bit of research into how corrosion testing is usually done?

TBH most standard tests wouldn't be too effective as the bearings would still be static. As would conditions in the chamber. But THAT?

In fact, I refuse to believe ANYONE is ignorant enough to actually think that that will give any information on the corrosion resistance of those bearings.

Kaesae must a joke. He just can't be for real.

I'm 31 so not down with the kids enough in relation to YouTube etc, however I reckon this whole saga is one of these viral adverts. STW, Descent World and Southern DH; as well as probably plenty of other forums I don't visit are wasting miles of threads wittering on about all this pish. It's got to be the most elaborate advertising campaign ever to hit mountain biking.

Not sure what it's for though – bearings?

i'm just going out….i may be some time.