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Who has the best bearings for wide 5 hubs. Hubs are regular starlite 55 not oil filled. Just trying to free up some rolling resistance. What do you go with? REM finished, coated, REM finished and coated, ceramic. Do the low drag seals actually seal enough to keep dust and water out. Should I use Bearing spacers yes or no? Is the maintenance different with one bearing over the other?
a lot of snake oil promotions in this area , i think there is a minute gain in low friction brgs but could never find an advantage in the spacers....jmo....
spacers are nice if adjusted properly, no need for all the low friction stuff, its not going to make or brake you, brake drag is where i would work
It's been a while so I may be off on my list order, but an acquaintance of mine built a dyno for tire rotation friction and tested about everything there was to test to see which and how much a difference it made.
Now granted just knowing the actual friction doesn't tell you how much a difference you will see on the track or translate into speed.
1. Wheel bearing spacers properly set reduced the friction/rolling resistance the most.
2. Seal drag was 2nd with the low drag or air gap seals
3. Bearing drag - order of least friction to most friction
A. REM Timken or name brand bearing
B. REM import bearing
C Timken bearing
D import bearing
Note: The REM'ed import bearing was barely better then the STD Timken - so money wise your better off with a Timken then spending more on a REM Import
4. Grease type or amount.
My opinion if your on a budget just use Temkin bearings and spacers and call it good, I think the rest is likely a waste of money but if money no object feel free but the gains are probably zero to almost nothing. The REM Temkin is a fair jump in reduction of friction but expensive.
Next thing is the ceramic or angular-type bearings (round balls instead of needles/cylinder tapered bearings, while they are low friction that is without side loads on them. So going straight yes they have less friction but under corning or side loads they have more friction then a STD tapered bearing.
Again going off memory, I do believe there was another item done in the test but don't recall what it was. Seems like it was at #4 instead of the wheel bearing grease which should be #5
all those things you mentioned billet , to me , would be more of a means of freeing up HP , i suppose on a crate engine class , there could be some benefit but adds cost which is what the classes were suppose to be avoiding , as for a open engine class , most are making way more power than they can use than what you would gain from all of that any way , JMO......BTW , i still have not wrapped my head around the benefit of the spacers other than maintenance , you are still using a tapered bearing that under load is going to create friction on the races ....