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Mrowka

How much difference do ceramic bearings make?

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Since I'm going to be stuck inside all winter, thinking about projects that I can do on my Javelins since they probably won't be driving much for a while, at least not outdoors.

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The cost of them outweighs any benefit except in limited circumstances, like you're aiming for a podium in stock class racing and you have heaps of money. They require regular maintenance unlike normal bearings.

They are 'better' from what I can see. However you could get close just by stripping the grease out of normal bearings and use light oil instead. I don't bother doing that though as I'm more interested in the bearings lasting longer than adding maintenance to the cars.

If you're bashing I wouldn't bother. If you race mod I wouldn't bother (you can easily overpower a car so the added efficiency wouldn't be that important). If you race stock and are near the front and looking for that last 10th of a second, then sure.

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I’m on the fence with this one, they are lighter, harder and have less rolling friction, so would not only spin faster and be more durable they would consume less power to drive. But.. and it’s a big but.. you’ll not be talking tenth of second on lap time, more like hundredths.. So unless you can smash out near identical machine like lap times you’d never know if they were worth it.. but then again I’ve never been one to shy away from being mr ‘all the gear no idea’ so if it takes you.. why not.. so in conclusion.. I’ll stay on the fence.

From first hand experience if you fit them, your car could catch fire be smashed by a meteorite and be submerged a thousand years in the deep sea and I’d put money on those silicon nitride balls being in a fit state to be rebuilt into something else.. 

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As members said, it would be marginal in total.   

Tamiya gave you a plastic spoon to build a sand castle with.  For an hour of fun with wet sand, a garden trowel would be better.  But do you need a shovel?  

Don't get me wrong, I wash ball bearings in alcohol and re-lube them with light machine oil.  Konghead takes 36 bearings.  If I used grease-packed Tamiya ball bearings, it would hardly be better than new nylon bushings in terms of friction. (But nylon bushings wear out, creating more and more friction as they age. Ball bearings get better, as they squeeze out the grease)  I washed out ball bearings and re-lubed them with light machine oil.  Even with a motor installed, I can turn one of the 12mm hexa wheel adapter things and all 6 dog bones would turn (diffs have clay).  It kinda hurts my fingers to do that, but it's quite doable.  It won't turn with regular bearings, it will turn easily if you had 36 ceramic bearings.  

If you want to see how fast ceramic bearings are why don't you test it out?  You can completely wash cheap metal bearings in any kind of degreaser and/or alcohol.  Without some kind of light oil, they'll rust and seize, but at least you can test it.  

In terms of actual speed, ball bearings tend to improve about 15%.  My guess is that ceramic bearings would improve 5% more.  If Konghead ran 18 miles per hour on Sport Tuned, with ball bearings it would go 20.7 miles with bearings.  With ceramic bearings, it would go 21.6 miles.  Let's say ceramic bearings cost $15 a piece.  It would cost $540 to equip 36 bearings to gain 0.9 miles per hour improvement.  (it's not actual data, it's my total guess)  Everybody is different, but for me, it's not worth begging for my wife's mercy.  

 

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for 99.9999% of people it would make NO tangible difference.

I agree with @Juggular, all my 'normal' ball bearings, once a year, are soaked in thinners, then dried, then soaked in oil for a few weeks and then cleaned again and then re-oiled with penetrating bearing oil. They last for donkeys years, are relatively cheap and give great performance. There are more gains to be had by simply changing to a lighter battery, or a smaller ESC or a lighter receiver or lighter servo or buying a decent set of tyres than by buying pro racer accessories like ceramic bearings IMHO.

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This reminds me. I >MUST< clean and oil the bearings in all my cars.

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Ceramic bearings will only be siginificantly better if the grade of them is higher than the metal equivalent.  Low grade ceramic bearings will perform worse than high grade metal ones. Just because they're ceramic doesn't mean much, if you don't know the grade of them. And we're talking model cars here, I doubt you're going to see any difference at all even with a high quality set of ceramics

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Ceramic bearings are just a way to make us pay more for what is essentially an equivalent product to steel bearings. Think iPhone vs pretty much any other phone.

Simply not worth it, at least in terms of 1/10 RC cars that are not going for 1st place at the A-Main, and even that is questionable tbh.

My 2c.

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