Wheel bearings again!
A year ago I lost two bearings (nearly at the same time) after extended travel (about 6 hours straight) in hot weather. Both axles were replaced with 6,000 lb. axles (upgraded from 4,000 #). Last ...
Forum Discussion
JJBIRISH wrote:
well I see our resident China built supporters have checked in and tried to infer Chinese made bearings are good to go…
they apparently haven’t bothered to read about all the damage caused by cheap Chinese bearings and the millions of counterfeit bearings being sold today… let alone the safety issuer of counterfeits in the automotive supply chain…
counterfeiters are as good at making a bad bearing look exactly like or even better the brand name bearing, even the packaging and coding are exact replicas…
the bearing business is big business, everything rides on them… the problem is widespread and crooks outside of Asia are entering the game… they buy cheap china made parts and bearings shipped to Italy where they were being re-branded and re-packaged to be sold at 3 to 4 time their worth…
confiscated products included fake SKF standard industrial bearings, wheel bearings, belt tensioning units, timing belt units and SKF boxes and bar code labels as well as fake products and packaging from other leading bearing manufacturers and original spare parts producers.
also laser marking equipment as well as unmarked no-name bearings from China yet to be re-branded… SKF spokesman said” Judging by the number of empty boxes, this was a rather large operation. It was actually the first time we found a ‘manufacturing’ operation outside of Asia.” At the raid in Turkey, the team discovered Chinese bearings marked with a fake SKF trademark as well as those of other manufacturers – some 10 tons of fake bearings in total…
The only way to know you are getting a good and quality bearing today is to buy it from a verified direct distributor of the bearing you want… you can’t tell by looking at the box or the bearing any more… generic china bearings will be low grade steel and have a mineral oil-based lithium grease…instead of a high-quality, polyurea-thickened, synthetic oil-based grease…
The advantages of polyurea-thickened, synthetic oils increase at higher temperatures. They can easily achieve grease lifetimes which are 20 times higher than standard greases… This means the user may be able to increase the safety margin for lubricant-related bearing damage and simultaneously increase re-lubrication intervals.
Bearings don’t fail from over lubrication, they fail from under lubrication… the claims of over lubrication causing overheating and failure are true if you use the wrong grease for the application… the churning of a low quality grease overheats and separates and losses the oil leaving only the carrier and the bearing without lubrication that fails…
Here is an absolutely absurd post. The factory bearings that come on trailers hold up fine given proper maintenance. Where are all the travel trailers sitting on the side of the Interstate with blown OEM (i.e. China) bearings? Where are they? There is NO REASON for a owner to switch out their wheel bearings after buying a trailer. Where are all the other vehicles with their axles falling off due to "bad bearings?" Chinese bearings are "good to go" because the tens of thousands of recreational vehicles on the road that use them!
Your synopsis on lubrication is good...your bashing of Chinese bearings is without basis.
We all know why bearings fail...and they all fail for the same reasons no matter where they are made.
