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Wheel bearings

I go to local bearing shops. NSK is what is usually installed from the factory and what most bearing shops carry.
 
Only issue with going the bearing store route is you will pay a LOT more than something like All Balls.
 
Nessism said:
Only issue with going the bearing store route is you will pay a LOT more than something like All Balls.
Click to expand...
Hadn't compared prices in many years. Even amongst shops I've found some places are cheaper than others.
 
I was looking at All Balls kits on eBay.

Side note: Is Bikebandit a good bet for new cush drive dampers?
 
FWIW:

I have had tough luck finding a 'bearing shop' in Cincinnati (not saying they don't exist), so I resorted to online shopping:

I just ordered NTN bearings from Amazon (Locate Bearings in CA I believe) for my steering stem as I believe that is OEM, and they are made in Japan. $40 shipped and I had to buy a seal from Suzuki ($7 shipped). So I paid $5-10 more than All Balls kit but got Japan and OEM parts which to me is worth it.

Unfortunately it is hard to find a USA supplier. I thought Timken was USA but all the bearings I saw were made in France. All Balls are made in China, possibly now Korea, but they are supposedly designed in the US.
 
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Joe Garfield said:
Unfortunately it is hard to find a USA supplier. I thought Timken was USA but all the bearings I saw were made in France. All Balls are made in China, possibly now Korea, but they are supposedly designed in the US.
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Timken's headquarters are in Canton, OH. I believe that it manufactures in several countries.
 
First stop for me is the local bearing supplier. Most of their customers are farmers or fishermen and they won't buy junk. Also helps that the guy behind the counter has a tidy GSXR outside and he will go the extra mile digging out o-rings, seals and so on. If you can find such an outfit close to you they may also have a good range of heavy duty, wet clutch friendly diesel oils at farmer prices.
 
There's a Grainger only a few miles from my house. I should check with them. I suppose they'll either want the old ones for reference or a stamping number.
 
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.

For my own vehicles I'd always used SKF or Timken on the four-wheelers and Koyo/Toyo for the bikes, and never had a premature bearing failure. In the sizes we need them for wheels, even the best quality ones are cheap enough that it's just not worth while trying to shave a buck or two on them. When a wheel bearing collapses because you've cheaped out, it's more than just your pocket that it hurts. Also, for some stupid reason, Suzuki OEM wheel bearings had a seperate rubber seal on the outside only, which never failed to allow road water and grit in. I've always replaced them with integrally-sealed bearings which have given no trouble at all.
 
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Dave, that is fantastic info. Here's a question. I notice different letter designations after the numbers on the rear bearings. DU on the one side, which is an NSK, and Z on the other side, which is a Koyo. I am guessing that these were replaced at the same time and wonder what those designations mean.
 
GS1150Pilot said:
Dave, that is fantastic info. Here's a question. I notice different letter designations after the numbers on the rear bearings. DU on the one side, which is an NSK, and Z on the other side, which is a Koyo. I am guessing that these were replaced at the same time and wonder what those designations mean.
Click to expand...
I can't say they're standard for all manufacturers, but what codes I recognise on this document seem to chime well enough with the ones I do know. DU is 'sealed on one side', Z is 'shield on one side'.
Suffixes, section 3 page 24.
http://www.nskeurope.com/cps/rde/dtr/eu_en/literature_bearing/EN_Bearing_Designation.pdf
 
themess said:
Timken's headquarters are in Canton, OH. I believe that it manufactures in several countries.
Click to expand...

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 :)
 
Grimly said:
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.....
Click to expand...

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.
 
themess said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
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