DXchulo

Check this out from VeloNews' coverage of Interbike (lots of bike porn if you haven't been checking it out every day).

So are ceramic bearings more expensive? How much more? Do they wear out faster?

They're 100% right about the whole sealed bearing thing. My BB has sealed bearings and it drives me crazy. How am I supposed to know the bearings are good if I can't open it up and look at them? I know....there are ways to tell, but it's not the same.

goldfish

ceramic parts are almost always more expensive....look at the Z-series Zipp wheels, they are about a grand more....

and look at the ceramic brakes on Porsches, Ferraris, etc.....thousands more.

they will be expensive, but they are far better quality and last longer(usually....i think.

antiquebiker

According to my understanding, ceramic is more brittle and subject to shattering if it takes an impact. It does not distort like metal and may provide a better toleranced adjustment though.

DXchulo

Interesting....I wonder how much FSA will be charging for the ceramic stuff.

mooglinux

1 second over 3 miles....shocking. i gotta get one of those, maybe ill finally be able to beat lance now

jemoryl

Sounds like marketing bollocks to me. Think of the thousands of variables that come into play, some of which we can control, others that we can't, in determining how much power is consumed whilst riding. To spend hundreds on one item that gives a one second advantage over a few kilometers seems foolish; that signal is totally lost in the noise.

I'm not an engineer but have worked with some bearings that had to turn at high RPM in a vacuum. If I recall, some ceramic bearings were spec'ed for applications where a pump rotor had to spin at over 10k rpm in a vacuum where grease lubrication would contaminate the vacuum...not exactly like a bicycle wheel. Plus the price difference wasn't so great to account for the $1k difference Zipp ceramic bearing wheels. I suspect the extra money could be used to pay for some advertizing copywriters......

Prince9931

More stuff to read
https://www.insidetri.com/train/bike/...es/1953.0.html

DXchulo

Ahh.....an astronomical price difference. In other words, I won't be trying them any time soon.



I've heard variations of this statement in some of the many frame material debates, but it's particularly well said here.



This is off-topic, but would you really feel like the world record holder if you could only do it with ceramic bearings? Did the previous record holder have ceramic bearings? Probably not. Then tell me who is the better cyclist. I know, I know.....bikes are always improving and it's hard to compare one era to the next. That's just a part of cycling, and the same can be said for tennis, golf, etc. I guess this is one of the few appealing things about running- shoes don't make that much of a difference, so you can compare times between eras (But what about wind? I guess it never goes away.)




This is somewhat surprising. A lot of times in cycling the expensive materials are actually less durable.



Now that's some expensive lube.



But here's the question- the article is from 2003, and here we are 2 years later and FSA is using ceramic bearings as well. It seems like they are becoming more common, and when that happens prices usually drop. Do you see this happening with ceramic bearings? Carbon was a lot more expensive back in the day, but look at it now. Do people care enough about bearings for this to happen to ceramic bearings?

Think about it....ceramic bearings have no real bling factor. You can't look a bike and tell it has fancy bearings. So here's the test....do we care about going fast, or do we really care about impressing others with our fancy bikes? Time will tell.

jemoryl

After reading the ZIPP argument for ceramic bearings it still sounds like massive overkill for an application like bicycling. Longevity: I've been pretty happy with the lifetime of properly maintained steel bearings. Do you think equipment freaks or pros really use the same stuff for long enough to make this a factor? Energy consumption: I find it hard to believe that there would be a 10 watt savings in switching to ceramic bearings with a rider input of 250 watts. Energy has to go somewhere, so if we were to dissipate 5 watts in each of our wheel bearings, wouldn't they actually get warm? I'm going to need to hook up some thermocouples to my hubs... Fancy Lubricant: I hate to break it to them, but the molecules in almost every kind of grease are hydrophobic. And just because something is developed for NASA doesn't mean it is appropriate for every application. Lubricating things in space is problematic because, for one thing, it is a giant vacuum - do you ever ride your bike in a vacuum?

As DXChulo points out, bearings don't have much bling factor, but some roadies pay careful attention to what others are riding and I'm sure there are those out there who know how to recognize just what wheels, etc. have the ceramic bearings and lust after them. It reminds me of the $600/ft. speaker cable that some audiophiles use.

dirtyscratches

Ceramic bearings are more expensive. If you think you need to buy a $1k wheelset to get them, you're wrong. Go to https://www.bocabearings.com/ and you can spec them out for your existing sealed bearing wheels. I looked into it for my IRO hubs which take Series 6000 bearings. If I recall they ran around $25 per race (2 needed per wheel). In the end I decided I'd rather pay $5 for the non-ceramic.

cyclintom

The thing about ceramic bearings is that they are basically much rounder than steel bearings. That's isn't strictly true since you can buy expensive steel balls that are very true. I did some work with a guy called "The Bearing Man" quite a long time ago now who explained ball bearings in excruciating detail. The upshot was that cheap steel bearings are quite remarkably efficient.

Ceramic Bearings DO make a difference but the difference is small and the cost difference is rather substantial though not as much as has been suggested here. Ceramic balls are usually used in high speed applications because they run cooler. And with less friction and heat because they're rounder and smoother, they have about double the service life of a steel bearing.

Shock loads are not substantial in a crank bearing consisting mostly of a person standing on the pedal when hitting a pothole.

Steel bearings cost a couple of cents apiece. You essentially gain nothing by going to bearings that cost a couple of dollars apiece.

My suggestion is to forget it.

DXchulo

What wheels did you have? I have Shimano wheels but they only have stuff for Shimano bottom brackets. Interesting site, though. A lot of the steel bearings are pretty damn expensive themselves.

DXchulo

I'm all about upgrading the engine and saving money, so I'm not buying any of this stuff, but it's fun to toy around with the idea.

1 second every 3-5 km is nothing? How much do you expect to gain? Try to tell that track world record holder he didn't gain anything.

A lot of people have spent more money on smaller gains, that's for sure. Take carbon bottle cages, for instance.

dirtyscratches

You might have better luck if you get the dimensions of the bearings that go in your shimano hub and find them that way. If I recall though, Shimano hubs are cone and loose bearings. If you just replaced the balls with ceramics, I'm not sure how the hub would hold up. My hubs (IRO) take sealed cartridge bearings so it's less of an issue.

DXchulo

Oh yeah, that slipped my mind. The article from 2003 mentioned that the metal around the bearings has to be treated a special way.

DXchulo

Check this out:

https://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/20...e0513/Hamilton

gmason

Where you will see that he paid 1500 (EUR, as I recall) for his set.