chaadster

Less than a year? Wow! I ride salty, MI roads all winter on cartridge bearings and have done so for years without seeing a failure rate like that. Service life for things like BBs I measure in multiple years despite the salted roads (does it get any worse conditions? Maybe fording streams, but who does that, and on a Brompton?!). I don't do really high mileage, however, but I also don't run the cheapest bits I can find.

I did have a set of cartridge GT hubs in the mid 90s that fragged out really early, but no wheel issues since then. I guess I kind of prefer caged bearing wheels (or freeballing) in some ways, because nothing is quite as sweet as repacked, perfectly adjusted wheel bearings! They just feel so good, like riding a new bike!