Cheap Import Bearings

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horton333 wrote:

Enough politics for an RV thread and I'll comment no more, other than to say I buy not by location of manufacture but by quality and price.

Since you need to know about quality before you buy, this thread gave you information.

Bearing have to be "clean room" free of contamination before repacking. I used to use tricloroethylene to blast out debris and old grease, hold the cage securely and blow high pressure air after which apply more solvent until the drippings came out crystal clear. My repacking cone was stored in a zip-loc bag. Good grease will not "migrate" 1/64th of an inch so it is wasteful to put grease in anything other than the roller bearing cage itself.

Ask any auto supply, and any auto repair,.....they have less bearing failures now than ever before in history.

Not to mention the fact that there are a lot more bearing failures from DIYs repacking, than bearings that are never touched from the factory, good for life.

nineoaks2004 wrote:
Most foreign made items are inferior to those made in the U.S., however most things are not made here anymore, and that is a shame, I will gladly pay more for a properly made item (meaning U.S. made)

Well drat. And here I thought BMW (Germany, US) made pretty good cars. Honda and Toyota (Japan, US, Canada, Europe) too. I don't have one, but wouldn't expect serious quality issues with the Volvo S60 (China) either. I don't like their closed ecosystem, but I've always thought Apple's hardware (China) is top notch. Dell and HP hardware (China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand) isn't perhaps quite as nice as Apple's, but I always thought it was mostly decent. My new cell phone (Korea) seems to be quite well made also. No complaints about my new SSD (Singapore) either.

Guess I was wrong about all of that.

I can, and do when I can find them, pay more for US made goods, but other countries really can make good products too. It's up to the company sourcing the product from an outsourced factory to provide good specifications for a quality product and then make sure the factory manufacturers it according to those specifications. That requires inspections, quality control checks on finished goods, etc... Usually companies outsource to save money and want to skip that step because it costs money - the factory figures that out, and cuts corners. It's not the country, it's what's in the interests of the company. An outsourced manufacturer is not working in the best interests of the sourcing company. They're working in their own best interest and will do whatever they can to improve their bottom line. (The same is often true for outsourced services, as well as government contracting.)

I think sometimes so many of us have lost all common sense. This argument comes up frequently here, the "China" manufacturing myth.

ALL products are made to a design specification which includes but is not limited to Material grades and testing, QA procedures, Manufacturing processes, tolerances as per the design drawings, shipping and packaging.

It is the Company that puts it's name on the product that produces these design specs. That company is more often than not an American one.

Any company anywhere in the world can design a cheaper product by lowering the criteria of the design spec. And that product can be made in the US, China, Indonesia or anywhere...to those specs.

Many of the highest quality products you use on a daily basis from parts in your cars to your flat screen SONY tv's to your new Apple I PAD are manufactured in ...yes CHINA.

The Chinese are one of the top 3 of Asia's highest educated, most literate, most highly motivated workforces and large companies that produce great products know this.

You only show your lack of knowledge of the world, how manufacturing really works and how companies do business in todays global market. Most of you just really have NO IDEA. But you continue to disseminate on this forum misinformation, Myth and just downright bad information on this topic constantly.

I can take any of you to factories in China that rival anything in the USA or Germany or England for sophistication, technology, workplace environment, ISO standards, and quality of production.

Some of you are just the last holdouts of a (thankfully) dying breed of uninformed Luddites with a strong dose of jingoism thrown in for good measure.

Problems like these bearings, which we do NOT have enough information to make ANY kind of intelligent judgement about are often oversimplified and become the topic of AXE GRINDING.

But I think it is safe to assume that if there are problems in ALL of the bearings in one installation. I would start looking at the INSTALLATION as my first point of interest, not the manufacturer.

New bearings 8 months ago. Used Valvoline wheel bearing grease. We can blame this on a lot of things; dirt, poor lube, bad adjustment or whatever. I can assure you that it was assembled with utmost care. Since just a few rollers in each bearing are bad, it must be the quality. I'm replacing with USA Timken bearings.

Good catch before a failure on a trip.

Only 8 months old...What was the clue to check them? Temps were running hot or another reason?

As for China, they make what the maker specs. A few years ago, I was looking for a maker for a certain part. If I wanted it right, the prices by companies in the US, Germany, Mexico, Canada, Russia, and China were similar. If I wanted it made cheaply, China could do that.

I have seen amazingly good bearings from China, and I've seen junk. I prefer items to be made in the US, but if a maker has a quality guarantee and actually stands behind it, that comes in second.

These kind of threads remind me very much of the 'cheap Japanese imports' threads of decades ago.
I also recall how shoddy product was when it was only made in the U.S.A., protected by barriers at the border.
Enough politics for an RV thread and I'll comment no more, other than to say I buy not by location of manufacture but by quality and price.

Pulled the third drum this morning. The first two had only the outer bearing failing, this one has a major fail in the inner bearing. Stay tuned, there will be more information and photos coming in the next few days.