UK Karting - Notice Board (General Karting) : Re: Ceramic axle bearings

Notice Board (General Karting)

Re: Ceramic axle bearings
Posted by 'Knighty' on 20 Apr 2016 @ 13:17

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KnightyJoined: May 2014
Total Posts: 470
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I honestly cant give you the absolute answer for karts. But I work with with all types of radial bearings in my day job, and with a ceramic bearing all you are paying for is:

1) a bearing that wont lose all of its radial internal clearance with excessive differential temperature between the inner and outer race, like high inner race temp, cool outer race temp, this is normally associated with VERY high speed or an internal combustion engine or electrical-motor application

2) The hardness grade of steel is absolutely assured, and you are paying for a higher ABEC rating and higher level of finish, which means the run-out of the bearing is to aerospace standards which is in the Region of ABEC-5 to ABEC-9.

As neither of the above are a factor in a kart axle you are literally wasting your money and a ceramic bearing is complete over-kill.

The reason people have started to use fancy ceramic bearings is because the kart market is swamped with poor quality low-hardness bearings that damage very easily then soon feel like a pepper-grinder when you turn the axle, typically originating from Russian or Chinese sweat-shops, really all you have to do is buy decent quality bearings from SKF, NSK, NTN or NMB.

For the rear axle most people remove the shields, blow out the grease and just oil with WD40 daily and then you have a very low friction bearing at a sensible cost, thats what we do and it works a treat.

in my day job, I regularly have all of the above bearing suppliers giving me all the ceramic bearing flannel and BS and even I have to ignore it. We use all-steel bearing in our application, which let me assure you is utterly eye watering in terms of performance, we idle at 5,000rpm, then accelerate to 70,000rpm within 0.3 seconds, and we have completed life tests to well over 2000hours with an all steel bearing.

Message Thread:

Ceramic axle bearings by '3190' (19 Apr 2016 @ 15:34)

Re: Ceramic axle bearings by 'Knighty' << You are here!

Re: Ceramic axle bearings by 'djcv8' (20 Apr 2016 @ 15:18)

Re: Ceramic axle bearings by 'Essential' (20 Apr 2016 @ 16:54)

Re: Ceramic axle bearings by 'TeamPoor' (20 Apr 2016 @ 17:23)

Re: Ceramic axle bearings by 'goman' (21 Apr 2016 @ 9:08)

Re: Ceramic axle bearings by 'Knighty' (21 Apr 2016 @ 11:52)

Knighty by 'goman' (21 Apr 2016 @ 12:08)

Re: Knighty by 'JimG' (21 Apr 2016 @ 13:52)

Re: Knighty by 'Knighty' (21 Apr 2016 @ 20:56)

Re: Knighty by 'biggles' (22 Apr 2016 @ 12:21)

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