Van

I've heard, "Oh, you want to be careful and make sure your replacement wheel bearings are made in Germany - the quality and materials are better."

So I ordered a full new set from the Porsche dealer, figuring that would be the best way to ensure I get the highest quality - and just some sub-standard OEM ones... Anyhow, they showed up yesterday:

-Both rears: Spain
-One front inner: Germany
-Other front inner: Mexico
-Both front outter: Japan

Should I be concerned or worried?

chrisp

Rear bearings - I heard a similar story and after running it to ground I learned that it's the grease, not the bearings that's causing the problem. Pop the seals, change the grease (Redline, Swepco, etc), reseal and you should be good to go.

mark kibort

what problem are you refering too?

The grease is important to life, but the manufacturing facilty of the major bearing manufacturers is not. Tollerances of the brand and style, ABEC level and QC are most important. SKF, TOYO, and others are all top notch.

Van

I've heard that the base materials the bearing are made out of conform to a higher quality standard in Germany... But I'm not sure I believe it - hence this thread.

RedlineMan

Hey;

I have some evidence that the German and Japanese versions would be preferable. Spain, Venezuela, not bad. Mexico, takes yur chances. This is anecdotal evidence for the most part. I personally have not seen any trends that I can lay claim to.

One thing that might provide some coroborative evidence is that the only place you can get the real critical bearings - like 944 drive shaft - is from Germany.

Your conclusions may vary.

mark kibort

Having been to the bearing manufacturers in JAPAN, and having a little understanding of the differnce of "manufactured "and "assembled", it is safe to say that most all your bearings by any manufacturer will be the same regardless of where they come from. Japan consistantly makes a much greater number of high quality bearings than anyone else in the world and have strict control of assembly plants all over the world. In fact, some of the quality control methods are even greater in the smaller plants in other parts of the world.

Geoffrey

On the sealed 964/993 sealed wheel bearings we've seen some brands fail sooner than others and it appears to be a hardness issue with the race which might be in combination with the grease. We simply replace the wheel bearings every year now and use *** brand if possible.

bart1

I worked for a Japanese bearing company for 9.5 years. NTN.

Hardness issue mentioned may be case hardening vs through hardening. This was becoming an issue in the industry I served.

Noel

You can infer from this what you want. When I owned an Audi A4 (Only German car I have owned except for the 911), I had to replace the wheel bearings under 100K miles. Of the Japanese cars I have owned (7), I have never had to replace a wheel bearing and some of those cars reached 150k miles.

Darren

Well my new rule is "NO CHINESE PARTS ON MY RACE CARS!"

Hehe...there is wide variation in parts depending on where they are made and some manufacturers even have multiple lines of quality! I order a lot of parts from Rockauto.com, which is a great site. If you go there you'll see they'll give multiple options of manufacturers for parts like this and you can choose the quality/pricepoint you want. I ordered a $8 Chinese tie rod end for my Acura that I promptly threw in the trash! It was a crappy cast part. Ball joints the same thing applies, some have forged cup bases, some are cast. Cast = crap, in the trash!

Japanese bearings especially are very high quality! I normally use Koyo on my Integra racecar. Mexico, who knows? Everything wears out on a race car, its a matter of when and how catostrophically!

Those old style taper bearings are so common that they are being made all over the world! I've had trailers with the same bearings.

chris walrod

We have and continue to use bearings from various manufacturers in our racecars. We can buy in bulk which helps pricing but more importantly the engineering support behind the bearings, since we design parts around beairngs and seals.

SKF has been great to us in terms of engineering support and application data. Many of their bearing are made in Spain, which we really dont have any trouble with.

Other suppliers like NTN, *** have also been high quality. We do buy higher grades, which may cloud this topic a little.