I may need to replace the wheel bearings in my Lew (2000) bearings with White Industries. With all the talk in ceramic bearings should I consider using them. If I am going to replace them now is the time?
Barb
yes.
Caution!
I ordered some “hybrid” ceramic bearings this past spring (from a well-known bearing company in Florida) and put them in a couple of wheels. Frankly, they were awful. Turning them by hand, they felt very sluggish. Under load (actually riding), they didn’t seem quite so bad and I rode them quite a bit in hopes they’d break in. I recently had them removed from one of the wheels and had the originally-spec’d conventional bearings installed. It was like night and day. It was like I’d been riding that bike with a bad brake rub all summer long. Good riddance to those ceramics.
A few weeks ago I ordered a set of Zipp 909s and I asked to have the FSA ceramic bearings installed in them (hoping I’d had a one-time bad experience with ceramics). After the mechanic at the shop did the installation, they contacted me and said, “you really don’t want these.” Same deal … super sluggish … like the hub was packed with mud. So they put the originally-supplied Zipp bearings back in. This cost them a few hundred dollars in sales, but it was THAT noticeable a difference.
In both cases, these were “hybrid” ceramic bearings. There are two ways (that I know of) to do “hybrid” ceramics. In the first, you get genuine ceramic bearings, but in a steel bearing race. In the second, you get a steel bearing race and you get steel bearings that are merely ceramic coated.
Unless you’re getting truly full-ceramic bearings in ceramic bearing races (which will really cost you), I’d suggest you save your money. From my experience so far, the ceramic thing that’s being pushed to the cycling market right now is crap.
N=1 … well, more like 3, really since I’ve tried these in three different wheelsets now and have been unhappy with all of them.
I thought you were BarbBikeTECHIE?!
I have been told they are a gimmick - a waste of money. A bike wheel does not turn at RPM’s fast enough to need a ceramic bearing. Just another way to get more of our pesos!
You have a lot of wheels, haha. And 909s, that means tubulars? You have crossed over to the dark side?
Thanks for the PM about the Heds though, I am going to keep looking.
I find it very hard to believe that a ceramic bearing is going to be any better than the standard bearings in my Specialized Trispokes. The wheel seems to turn forever if I give it a spin.
Whenever my mechanic replaces bearings he uses the Enduro ones and to-date they’ve never failed and spin forever.
Wow, thanks for your opinion/experience here psycholist as I’ve been contemplating these as well (FSA ones). I’ll probably pass …
A friend has just pulled out his FSA Ceramic BB after a couple of thousand km and the bearings are, in the technical language of the head mechanic “shagged” - they had side to side play and had become sticky.
Buy some high quality ABEC 5 or higher rated bearings. Ceramics are too expensive to justify, and most of the widely available ones are hybrids and not that great.
Chris
Empty post contents.
the local shop talk I’ve heard: ceramic bearings are all the rage in Formula 1 race cars, thus the trickle down theory started. At speeds of 200mph they are great, for bikes and 20-30 mph they are not good.
I had a dream recently where I replaced my rear wheel with one the size of a rollerblade wheel. In my dream I had to switch to ceramic bearings because they were getting too hot with the high RPM.
But my question is, why did I have that dream instead of the one with Elle McPherson and Angelina Jolie?
At speeds of 200mph they are great, for bikes and 20-30 mph they are not good.
Dang … I knew I was way too slow!
Buy some high quality ABEC 5 or higher rated bearings.
I have tried Ceramic Hybrids from Boca Bearings (that ‘Florida’ company) with a set of American Classic 58mm tubulars and had similar experiences as others - out of the box the bearings did not seem that smooth and on the road did not see much benefit. I next tried FSA’s Mega Exo ceramic bottom brackets in 3 bikes and again, the impression I got was that static crank resistance increased which negated any performance advantage of the bearings. Not to be deterred, I also tried an FSA bottom bracket that had been retro-fitted with Enduro ABEC 5 Ceramic bearings and seals. Cost was nearly 50% less than FSA’s Ceramic bottom bracket and I can say that I feel a difference out on the road with those bearings. For that reason I plan on installing Enduro ABEC 5 ceramic bearings on my race wheels but seeing as I do not have a road race until February of next year, it may be a while before I get that task done. More information on Enduro Bearings can be found here: http://www.endurobearings.com/products/enduro_bearings.html and here is an online retailer: http://www.enduroforkseals.com/id74.html
We’ve looked long and hard at ceramic bearings as a possible performance upgrade and these are some of our findings over the past six months:
Campagnolo tried ceramic wheel bearing as standard in a high end wheelset. I seem to recall the wheels were called the “Hyperion” possibly. The attempt at improving rolling resistance, accoding to a phone conversation I had with an inside representative at Campagnolo’s technical support 800 number was that the experiment was not successful in tangibly lowering rolling resistance and subsequently cancelled. When Shimano outside sales reps, Mavic inside technical representatives and Campagnolo inside technical support personnel were quiried about “upgrading” or changing their wheelsets to aftermarket ceramic bearings they did not recommend it. Mavic told us it would void the warranty. Shimano and Campagnolo said they were not certain what their policy on warranty service for retrofitted, ceramic modified wheels was. The only persons who have consistently recommended the use of ceramic bearings are the ones who are actively selling them. Reports from inside and outside the industry have substantiated the claim that cermic bearings are rounder and take longer to manufacture, but any benefit in performance would only be appreciated at speeds much higher than cycling speeds. One bearing company mentioned the only suitable application was inside aircraft engines.
In general we are seeing very little solid information that substantiates the claim that ceramic bearings make a wheel or a bottom bracket or a jockey wheel any faster. The idea of having non-rotating ceramic bearings such as headset bearings seem even less sensical.
While there may be little or no real, empiracle, independantly verifiable data to substantiate or refute the performance of ceramic bearings I would suggest their substantially higher cost over standard bearings would necessitate a hefty improvement to justify their use. That has yet to be demonstrated.
At that dealer, the ABEC 5 are all steel bearings, at least that’s how it appears to me. And their ceramics are hybrids with no mention of ABEC 5.
My name is Josh Rubin, I own a new company called RMS Inc, we build Ti tri bikes. I’m an enginneer with a degree from USNA. What most of the replies are saying is probably correct. Ceramic bearings are absolutely better in certain applications, but I don’t think a bicycle wheel is one of them. I am an ex Navy F-14 guy and now fly for an airline and we use ceramic bearings in all of our engines. They can take alot more and disapate heat much better than steel. Our engines are also rated in “percent” of RPM because the actual RPM’s are around eight gazillion and thats where ceramic bearings really shine, at 90 RPM’s I’m not sure there is too much difference. If you have some extra cash and need some new bearings, why not, but I doubt there will be any noticable difference. josh@rmstriathlon.com
so the moral of the story is “maintain your bottom bracket and wheel bearings with good lube”? Splendid.