Wheel bearings

[Joe Garfield]

Timken's headquarters are in Canton, OH. I believe that it manufactures in several countries.

Thanks for posting this (and to Dave for the above post). While I mistakenly used the word 'supplier' for 'manufacturer', I feel like an A$$ for not getting Timken. But I will try to use their parts from now on

[GS1150Pilot]

Thanks again, Dave et al..

[Guest]

Just as a heads-up for those who want to know a little bit of the balls (and rollers).
For a year or two I worked in a plant making the balls. Now, prior to that, I'd used many makes of ball bearings over the years and knew some were better than others, obviously.
It still came as somewhat of a surprise to find the somewhat loose tolerances were acceptable enough for some makers, but no real surprise to find the tighter tolerances that were only just good enough for some others.
The toughest ones of the lot were Koyo - we really had to pull out the stops to meet their requirements and everything had to be absolutely spot-on to produce balls that were acceptable enough for them.
We made balls for Timken, SKF, RHP, F_A_G, Koyo, NTN, and a few others. The worst ones were for a French bearing maker which supplied Renault. Funnily enough, some of the Renault models at the time had a chronic gearbox bearing problem - caused by under-specified bearings. Nothing to do with us, we just made and supplied what we were asked to do.....

Nice information. Bearing replacement is a frequent topic in these forums. Such information might help those needing to replace bearings.

As an aside, I once met another former ball bearing maker, during a 1991 stay in Germany. He worked in the Schweinfurt bearing plant as a teen, during the massive Allied attempt to destroy the factory from the air. Later, he was sent to other countries to help get new bearing factories running.

[Grimly]

As an aside, I once met another former ball bearing maker, during a 1991 stay in Germany. He worked in the Schweinfurt bearing plant as a teen, during the massive Allied attempt to destroy the factory from the air. Later, he was sent to other countries to help get new bearing factories running.

There's a kind of circle taking shape there. A friend of mine's father was an ex-Wehrmacht PoW, who'd been a tank mechanic on the Eastern Front, and was captured by the Allies in the West, in the latter part of the war. His home town was originally Schweinfurt and post war, he stayed on in Scotland. A very gifted engineer, he created a career in heavy machinery until his retirement.