A word about bearings

Started by tincanary, August 30, 2024, 01:35:29 PM

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foakes

Most of us have a decent bearing cleaning system that works for them.

Mine is to pop off one shield and throw it away.

Then a 10 minute soak in the ultrasonic cleaner using lacquer thinner.

Rinse with water.

Dry the bearing, then drop it in a small pimento jar of synthetic oil (I use WRL191S, but any other synthetic oil will work great) for a few minutes while I am assembling the other parts on the reel.

Remove the bearing from the oil and just tamp off the excess oil with a paper towel.

Inject grease into the bearing race.  I use Cal's Purple on fresh water spinners, and either Cal's Tan or Yamaha Marine on salt Conventionals or salt spinners.

Install and I'm done.

Unless really badly worn or severely rusted —- 95% of quality steel bearings can be successfully revived using this method.

Best, Fred
The Official, Un-Authorized Service and Restoration Center for quality vintage spinning reels.

D-A-M Quick, Penn, Mitchell, and ABU/Zebco Cardinals

--

I never make the same mistake twice.

I make it 5 or 6 times, you know, just to be sure.

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wussero

#16
I replaced all the spool bearings in my Penn Torques which are 4 bearings that effect the spools rotation.  The brake adjustment knob on the right, left side plate, two on the spool.  I did this on 4 reels.
Replaced with Acer Racing hybird ceramics.

Damn things can really cast now!  I threw a 2 oz jig 50 yards plus, and hit my splice with my 1000 UC Monster, and my Penn Torque 25N  IF u try casting any harder, u gonna backlash more!

jurelometer

Quote from: wussero on September 12, 2024, 12:03:21 AMI replaced all the spool bearings in my Penn Torques which are 4 bearings that effect the spools rotation.  The brake adjustment knob on the right, left side plate, two on the spool.  I did this on 4 reels.
Replaced with Acer Racing hybird ceramics.

Damn things can really cast now!  I threw a 2 oz jig 50 yards plus, and hit my splice with my 1000 UC Monstere, and my Penn Torque 25N  IF u try casting any harder, u gonna backlash more!
:)


Good that you are happy with your results.  But a couple points for other folk considering this:

1.  The Torque star drags have a floating spool, which means that the spool turns on a stationary shaft when casting, so only the two spool bearings should be able to affect casting performance.

2.  Lubricants will greatly affect casting performance. Sometimes the performance change people see when replacing bearings is more due to the change in lubricants than the type of bearings.  Different types or amounts of lubricants and the condition of lubricant is usually inevitable unless you are pretty deliberate about making an accurate comparison with bearings that have been completely cleaned and lubricated identically.

3. Hybrid bearings will need to be well lubricated to protect the stainless races from corrosion if fishing in saltwater.  The ceramic balls will help prevent the bearing from seizing up entirely, but the races will still get pitted, robbing performance.

-J

oc1

In a metal bearing isn't it usually the race that wears and gets grooves in it rather than the balls?  If so, hybrid bearing makes no sense and full ceramic would be the way to go

jurelometer

Quote from: oc1 on September 12, 2024, 07:52:32 PMIn a metal bearing isn't it usually the race that wears and gets grooves in it rather than the balls?  If so, hybrid bearing makes no sense and full ceramic would be the way to go
Metal on metal rubbing at high speed causes friction welding, which from what I have read is a cause of wear on the balls and races. Ceramic balls eliminates this issue. 

No idea if it is just the races that are wearing on all-metal bearings or if it is just harder to see wear on the balls.

Agree that full ceramic will give you more of the benefits of ceramic bearings. And more of the disadvantages.

-J

oldmanjoe

Well it is pretty impressive on how the balls are made for the bearings .   Of the failures that I have seen over the years the ball starts the process .
https://www.lily-bearing.com/resources/blog/how-are-ball-bearing-made/

Another on failure .
https://www.bdsbearing.com/blog/bearing-failures
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boon

#21
I would speculate that close to 100% of ball bearing failures in fishing reels are due to one of three things: corrosion primarily due to salt ingress, other contamination leading to compromised lubrication, and axial deformation due to excessive sideways loading of radial bearings. The bearings will be generally be running somewhere around 1% and maybe 0.1% of their rated RPM; I'd be surprised if bearing wear purely from normal use would be an issue for the vast majority of reels.

tincanary

My bearing supply was re-upped yesterday.  The 10 packs I already had on hand, the 20 packs are what came in yesterday.



These do come pre-greased, so for spool bearings I cleaned them with Brakleen, hit with TSI, and blew out the excess with compressed air.  These are the 1150Y04 that were put into some Ambassadeur 2500Cs.





Grand total was $173.59 after shipping for 80 bearings, or about $2.17 per bearing.  NMB bearings run about $5 to $7 each bought domestically, and price breaks aren't available unless buying 100 or more at a time.  Even then, they still run ~$4 each.

ssrmr2

tincanary,

thank you for this information, piecing my order together for nmb bearings.

foakes

The Official, Un-Authorized Service and Restoration Center for quality vintage spinning reels.

D-A-M Quick, Penn, Mitchell, and ABU/Zebco Cardinals

--

I never make the same mistake twice.

I make it 5 or 6 times, you know, just to be sure.

"Enjoy the little things in Life — For someday, you may look back — and realize that they were the big things"
                                                     Fred O.

ssrmr2

anyone else from california having an issue procuring bearings from japan??? I am receiving a u able to ship due to material...

anyone willing to split an order?

ssrmr2

I would like to add as it's not as straight forward as ebay is.

I eventually found a supplier that would ship to usa, by searching "nmb" instead of the bearing part number. this opened up the sellers list that shipped to usa.

be careful to locate the fields that the seller is requesting for example, I bought a 10 pack of bearings and was required to specify which bearings.  this was not as clear, and maybe this is due to the translator. I needed up reaching out to buyee support and was able to get my order going.

I hope to recieve here in the next few weeks and i'll reply back when bearings arrive.

thanks again tincanary

steve


ssrmr2

update,

I received bearings today. took 14 days exact.

I will be ordering more this way to cover all my reels and some friends.

as stated in my previous post I was not able to locate the options area per auction. however I did write buyee support and they took care of it for me. quickly.

as tincarary stated you can shop and keep things at the warehouse for 30 days and then ship all at once. japanese mail tracking number worked and was able to follow the package from japan to my door.

off to remove shields are clean bearings. i'll loop back when these NMB bearings start to act up.

Hella Bread

Quote from: tincanary on August 30, 2024, 01:35:29 PMWhen it comes to bearings, reels are generally not considered a critical application.  Chinese manufacturers can produce bearings of appropriate quality for this application, at a price point lower than any other manufacturer. The main problem with the Chinese manufacturers is poor quality control resulting in inconsistent quality.  I've noticed this discrepancy in quality control first hand; a pair of brand new bearings from the same manufacturer in the same series, and one almost always spun better than the other.  There is little to no consistence in performance.  Quality bearings will spin similarly assuming both are clean and correctly lubricated.

The largest high quality manufacturer is NMB Bearing, a division of MinebeaMitsumi. NMB is the world's largest producer of high precision miniature and instrument bearings, supplying over half of the precision bearings used the world over.  Their production facilities are located in Singapore and Thailand.  They produce bearings for everything from industrial applications to sensitive instruments to dental tools.  They are the real deal, and the prices are much cheaper than just about every overly hyped bearings one can think of.

There are other well known manufacturers in Japan; namely NSK, KOYO, and Nachi who manufacture most or portions of the range of bearings used in most mid to high end JDM, USDM, and EUDM fishing reels. They are slightly higher in cost than NMB due to lesser volume, but still excellent bearings nonetheless.  This is why I advocate that people retain the factory bearings if they're self servicing, the stuff you have already is most likely superior to whatever you're getting from AliExpress, Boca, or Roro, assuming it isn't worn out.

In the USA, there are three makers; NHBB, Barden, and Timken.  Being domestic suppliers, the largest portion of their products are used by the aviation, aerospace, automotive, and medical industries.  None of those companies can compete price wise with the quality Japanese manufacturers referenced above, much less the Chinese.  I've priced them for my own uses, and they were a bit too much for me to dip my toe in the pool. 

In Europe, GRW is the big player in the high precision instrument bearing market, but like the USA makers, most of their production is for more more critical applications.  They are also prohibitively expensive, with GRWs running upwards of $30 USD each if you were to acquire them to use as spool bearings.  Abu even uses or did use GRWs in their Ambassadeur Pro Rocket models, and even used them in the 80s and 90s in the 1500C and 2500C variants sold in Europe and Japan.

As far as fishing reel bearings are concerned, the quality choice is NMB, who manufacture consistent quality at reasonable pricing thanks to their volume of production.  I run them in all of my reels.  They're cheap, durable, and perform very, very well.  Even as a reel service owner, I include them with my services as part of my routine.  It's simply cheaper for me to swap in new high quality spool bearings than it is for me to go through the trouble of cleaning, testing, maybe cleaning again, and lubricating.  They're removed from the package, given a quick clean to remove storage grease, lubricated, and installed.  Bing bam boom, done.

Most of the bearings used in fishing reels are of such low mass that if addressed in manufacturing can achieve 50,000 RPM or more.  To achieve these speeds the makers place emphasis on retainer materials, machining, ball grade, raceway finish, and lubrication. None of these specifications are controlled by ABEC tolerance standards, they are left entirely to the decision of the manufacturer. This is why ABEC grade has very little to do with bearing performance, but it does make for an easy to sell.

ABEC grades were designated to create a consistent basis for engineers to spec the fitment of a bearing to a shaft or housing. Too loose a fit creates a situation where the bearing isn't correctly seated in place and too tight a fit can compress the bearing rings, removing the internal clearance of the balls, adding friction or even binding. This system was devised in the 30's when machining to hundredths was considered precision. With CNC machining, many quality manufacturers of bearings can hold ABEC 5 tolerances without really any effort.

I hope this cleared up some confusion for everybody reading.  I researched this stuff through and through and had a good discussion with a friend of mine who engineers tooling for various auto manufacturers here in the Detroit area.  Between my testing as well as customer feedback, quality wins over whatever said manufacturer puts on the label.    As it stands, most manufacturers of flavor-of-the-month bearings do exactly that, market to the uninitiated because higher numbers get product out the door.  I hope I've helped you all and if you want to know how to get NMB bearings cheap, I will post my method later on.  I do order from Japan, and the bearings end up running $1 to $2 each when bought in packs of 10 or more.  Stay tuned!
Glad to see you preaching the gospel of NMB/NSK stock bearings.  Glad to see you taking advantage of the cheap bearings while we can