Bearings
08-17-11, 08:15 PM
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Bearings
Am getting ready to give my bike a good tune-up / lube-up. When I lube the hubs I was thinking about slipping ceramic bearings with a lighter weight grease in my hubs. Anybody do this and how did it work out?
08-18-11, 05:01 AM
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Ceramics are an expensive placebo. Spend the money on something useful.
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08-18-11, 07:46 AM
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You probably would not be slipping the bearings in. You'd be hammering the old bearing out and pressing the new ones in.
Quality steel bearings (ABEC 3 or 5) work just as well as the cheap ceramics sold for bicycle use and are much cheaper. The ceramic bearings sold for bicycle use usually have loose seals so they rotate freely in the hand/on the stand, but those same loose seals let contamination in easily, so the bearing dies an early death. Without the loose seals the cheap ceramic bearings are no better than good steel bearings.
Quality steel bearings (ABEC 3 or 5) work just as well as the cheap ceramics sold for bicycle use and are much cheaper. The ceramic bearings sold for bicycle use usually have loose seals so they rotate freely in the hand/on the stand, but those same loose seals let contamination in easily, so the bearing dies an early death. Without the loose seals the cheap ceramic bearings are no better than good steel bearings.
08-18-11, 08:37 AM
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The ceramic bearings sold for bicycle use usually have loose seals so they rotate freely in the hand/on the stand, but those same loose seals let contamination in easily, so the bearing dies an early death. Without the loose seals the cheap ceramic bearings are no better than good steel bearings.
08-18-11, 06:27 PM
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My hubs take loose bearings and I found an industrial bearing distributor I can get loose bearings in the correct size of good quality. Everything I have read suggests they are lighter, harder, and more perfectly shaped than steel which is theorically translated into more speed at less output.
08-18-11, 07:15 PM
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don't try this at home.
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My hubs take loose bearings and I found an industrial bearing distributor I can get loose bearings in the correct size of good quality. Everything I have read suggests they are lighter, harder, and more perfectly shaped than steel which is theorically translated into more speed at less output.
Timing the front wheel spin down:
6 min 55 secs: finishing spinning in circles, starting the final oscillation back and forth, due to the weight of the rim joint.
11 min 20 secs: finally stopped completely.
Yes, it was moving for over 11 minutes with good old steel bearings. And some of this drag on the wheel was due to air friction when it was spinning fast. How much less drag could there be?
( I knew it spun for a long time, but I never timed it. That's pretty amazing.)
Last edited by rm -rf; 08-18-11 at 07:21 PM.
08-18-11, 07:46 PM
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Just my .02 and opinion...
Just get the highest quality steel bearings and then you can replace those when they are just getting into the back half of their life cycle. With this higher replacement you can probably change them 2 to 3x over for the price of going ceramic just once... the incremental performance of ceramic is just a handful of seconds over something like 20 miles.
Not really worth it for the $ investment.
Just get the highest quality steel bearings and then you can replace those when they are just getting into the back half of their life cycle. With this higher replacement you can probably change them 2 to 3x over for the price of going ceramic just once... the incremental performance of ceramic is just a handful of seconds over something like 20 miles.
Not really worth it for the $ investment.
08-18-11, 08:18 PM
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One reason I tried ceramic bearings was durability since I ride in all weather conditions. The bottom bracket wore out in 6,000 miles and the rear hub bearings wore out in 5,000 miles.
Way cheaper to just go with standard stuff.
There is very little performance benefit from going ceramic since anything on a bike does not spin at a high enough rpm to matter between high grade steel and ceramic.
