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Best wheel bearings
Birdman - July 7th, 2012 at 11:53 PM

Hey All,

With so many brands available and a lot of crap out there i need some opinions on the best quality brand of stock beetle wheel bearings? Cheers


tar76 - July 8th, 2012 at 07:08 AM

i'm off to get some front wheel bearings for my bus this morning so hopefully someone will reply. The only names i know is SKF?


HappyDaze - July 8th, 2012 at 07:32 AM

You won't get much better than SKF.


vwo60 - July 8th, 2012 at 09:58 AM

Timken, the inventor of the tappered roller bearing, still the best and a industry standard where i work off shore.


matberry - July 8th, 2012 at 12:16 PM

Timken, NSK, SKF, FAG, all good quality. And don't forget, put in the best grease suitable for the job and don't preload the bearings, causes more failed bearings than you can imagine.


69bug - July 8th, 2012 at 05:58 PM

wheres the best place to get them?


vlad01 - July 8th, 2012 at 09:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by vwo60
Timken, the inventor of the tappered roller bearing, still the best and a industry standard where i work off shore.


Yeah I never heard of them and wasn't keen on trying them, then I read made in USA laser etched on the cups and I was "hell yeah!"

great bearings! there is also SKF and SKA both Jap bearings also very nice.


don't know of any others though, but stay away from bearing that have no makings. I made that mistake on one of my cars and the front wheel bearings failed after 22kk/m and the cause was the race had a different tapper to the actual rollers :rolleyes:


Birdman - July 8th, 2012 at 11:54 PM

I'd heard Timken were good but "made in america" is NOT an indication of quality to me.


vwo60 - July 9th, 2012 at 07:36 AM

As i said Timken are the standard were i work , used in machines that have a 100 % duty cycle that are not even shut down yearly for maintenance.


vlad01 - July 9th, 2012 at 09:40 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Birdman
I'd heard Timken were good but "made in america" is NOT an indication of quality to me.


better than saying made in china ! you know if its made in china is guaranteed to fail as it was engineered to fail so to speak lol


vlad01 - July 9th, 2012 at 09:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by vwo60
As i said Timken are the standard were i work , used in machines that have a 100 % duty cycle that are not even shut down yearly for maintenance.


1+

I went to a bearing supplier few months ago and they had these giant tapper bearings for some industrial application and they were Timken. Industrial application don't normally have cheapo versions of replacement parts. only consumer market has cheapo thats why its called "consumer"