Ceramic is a super-hard wearing material, that in theory just blasts all the dirt and crap out of the bearing as it spins round. It also never rusts!

Skateboard bearingsize chart

Speed rings are super annoying - They are really tiny and very easy to lose! Not needing them is insanely liberating, especially if you take your wheels off your axles at all often.

You need new skateboard bearings if your bearings feel rough or crunchy, or if you can feel them slowing you down when you push, even after you've cleaned them. Top tip - bearings are unlikely to slow you down at all unless they are really destroyed! Check your axle nuts aren't overtightened, and be sure that you're running bearing spacers and speed washers first.

If you suspect you have a wheel bearing fault but aren’t sure which side of the vehicle is affected, there’s a safe and simple test you can use to check. Our step-by-step guide below can take you through how it’s done…

First up - forget the ABEC rating. It's meaningless for skateboard, surfskate, longboard and cruiser board bearings, and is just lazy marketing. Decent companies like Bones Bearings acknowledge this.

They're as good as any other ABEC rated bearing. The ABEC rating isn't really applicable to skateboard bearings - how good a bearing is for skateboarding has little to do with it's ABEC rating.

The fastest skate bearings in the world are brand new bearings, or bearings that you have just cleaned. We stock Bones Bearings, Zealous Bearings, Bronson Bearings and Sabre Bearings. You really don't need anything else.

Some skate bearings now come without shields at all! Supposedly they are faster and noisier, and there is a trend for taking shields off of your bearings for a little extra speed. You can event buy shieldless bearings - check out the Bronson Raw Bearing!

We recommend Chrome/Carbon steel bearings, and a semi-regular bearing cleaning regime. Or just avoid skating in the wet.

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Equally, if you run bearings spacers you'll know how frustrating it can be lining everything up to get a wheel back on (although this technique for putting wheels on fixes that). Bearings with a built in spacer do hold themselevs in better alignment compared to bearings with seperate spacers, which helps prevent wear and therefore makes your bearings last longer.

Some of them are classic... from greasing bearings with vaseline to diamond-coated titanium bearings, we've heard it all.

In as far as ABEC ratings are concerned, the seals have nothing to do with the quality of the bearing. However, for skateboarding, where we subject our bearings to all sorts of horrible Road Gunge, shielding is really important.

In other words, as long as you're not buying total junk, good bearing shields are the most important thing. We recommend a rubber labyrinth shields.(RU)

"Titanium" bearings are not actually made with titanium balls and races. They are steel bearings coated in Titanium Nitride ( "TiN", like a "Titanium" drill bit). This is great, except the coating will wear off in a few hours of skating, and you'll be back to reuglar old steel bearings.

The cost of a wheel bearing replacement in the UK is roughly £150-£300, dependent on the make and model of your car and a mechanic’s labour costs. The good news is that you don’t need to replace all wheel bearings at once if the other three remain in a safe and serviceable condition.

So here, for your enjoyment and possibly education, is the Vandem Longboard Shop "Bearing Mythbusters" - all your skate bearing related questions, answered!

Typically, wheel bearings have a lifespan of around 85,000 to 100,000 miles, so if your car is approaching these kinds of figures, it’s important to keep an eye on the tell-tale signs of a bearing in decline.

The ABEC rating is designed to measure quality in industrial bearing applications - where the RPM is often very high, vibration is very low, and in a relatively clean environment. On a skateboard, we are spinning our bearings much slower, vibrating them to oblivion, all in very dirty environments!

If you've ever blown out a bearing, you'll know the value of a "Swiss" style bearing. If you are hard on your bearings, they're worth looking at - they definitely stay fast for longer.

The outer races are kept apart by the wheel core - but without a bearing spacer for the inner race, it's easy to overtighten your axles and put uneeded stress on your bearings.

If you skate in the rain a lot, it might be worth having a spare set, so that you can have a set on ice if you don't have time to clean them straight away. Although if you leave a bearing wet for a few hours or overnight, it'll rust solid - so dry them out ASAP!

As you’ll know from our car maintenance glossary, bearings allow the wheels to turn freely without generating huge amounts of heat. If a bearing were to fail, the wheel can seize up altogether, resulting in catastrophic damage and the potential for a serious incident. Indeed, in the very worst-case scenario, a failed bearing can cause the wheel to rip away from the car entirely.

Bearing spacers are really worth putting in your wheels - they only cost a couple of quid, which is nothing considering that they make your existing bearings last longer and roll faster. And you can use them in any future bearings that you buy. What's not to like?

If you have normal skate bearings (ie not "Built In" bearings - below), then you really should have some speed rings. If you have BuiltIn bearings, then you don't need them. Hooray!

You can still drive with a bad wheel bearing, but we wouldn’t recommend it for long distances. Keep your mileage to a minimum and look out for worsening symptoms of a wheel bearing fault; we cover the symptoms to check for later in this guide.

Need a better way to get your wheels with bearings spacers on your board without all the faffy alignment? Check this guide out!

Confident in car maintenance DIY? Lubricate and service your car’s wheel bearings with Holts Multi-Purpose Lithium Grease. Trusted by professionals, it reduces friction and wear in all moving parts, even those that work under extreme pressure. For more top tips and advice, read the Holts blog or visit our help and advice centre.

Sliding on a longboard, especially on grippy race wheels, puts a lot of sideload through a bearing. Over time you might find that your bearings slow down as the finely-polished races and balls wear in. We recommend some Built In skate bearings if you are doing any skating like this - they last a lot longer.

The other reason to get ceramics is you don't enjoy cleaning bearings - fair enough, there's usually better ways to spend your time! If you're looking for a low-maintenance solution, ceramics could be worth a look.

Are allskateboardbearings the same size

Jumping off stuff on your skateboard is fun and we're not about to stop you doing it. You're probably aware that decks snap and trucks bend after a few big hits - but bearings take just as much of a beating. If you're a heavy hitter then you'll need new bearings more often - check out the Bones Big Balls and Bones Swiss Six bearings.

No, they aren't. You need to lube them with something, otherwise the super-hard ceramic balls will eat the softer steel races for breakfast.

When the car is elevated and in place, take hold of each wheel in turn and wiggle it backwards and forwards, side to side. If there is any play in the wheel, it feels wobbly or loose, or an unusual noise accompanies some minor movement, then you’ve found the problem wheel.

This question tends to get asked by someone in the shop who is thinking about buying new bearings anyway, and we almost always fail to convince them not to buy some. So if you are asking this question, stop putting off the inevitable, get yourself some fresh bearings, and go skate!

To do that, you’ll first need to jack up your car so that both wheels are off the ground. We would strongly recommend using service ramps for this to ensure you can carry out the following checks safely.

A bearing with all your weight on it will spin way, way better than an "unweighted" bearing. Unloaded bearings also experience "skidding" - which is where the balls don't roll around the races, they skid or slide - which means that spinning an unloaded bearing is even more meaningless. So you can stop flicking your wheels and timing how long it takes them to stop.

The "Swiss" skate bearing was invented by George Powell about seven hundred years ago while he was looking for Animal Chin (still not seen him yet...)

Continuing to drive on a bad wheel bearing can lead to extensive and critical damage which will be significantly more expensive to repair than a simple bearing re-grease and service. And in the worst cases, the damage from a faulty bearing that goes untreated can prove impossible to fix, particularly if it contributes to corrosion of surrounding components and the axle.

Also important is the amount of side-to-side play. Bearings with a lot of play wear out faster, especially for longboarding, slalom and downhill.

So, all this considered, our recomendation for most skaters is this: just get a decent set of Chrome Steel bearings with good shields and look after them. Ceramics are nice, but they are a luxury that most will not notice. If you can afford ceramics, you can afford a really awesome set of steel bearings like Bones Swiss Bearings or Super Swiss Six Balls, both of which will outperform cheaper ceramic bearings all day. Spend your pennies on train tickets to the skatepark instead!

A decent rubber shielded bearing by a proper skate brand will stay faster for longer than as no-name bearing with a high ABEC rating.

If you’re aware that there’s an issue with your car’s wheel bearing, it’s best to take it straight to a mechanic for a full diagnosis and repair. Often, it may just be a case of relubricating the ball bearings within the assembly before repacking them, which is significantly simpler to put right than the alternative.

What can we learn from this? Well, for starters, even if ceramic ball resulted in 100% less friction than a steel ball, you'd still only loose 3% of your overall bearing drag. Secondly, you can make your bearings a relatively whopping 30% faster by simply removing one of your shields, and probably at least 15% faster by using a lighter bearing lubricant.

Stainless Steel doesn't rust as fast as Chrome Steel, so it's great if you skate in the wet or you can't be bothered with cleaning your bearings every now and then. However, Stainless Steel is also softer than Chrome/Carbon Steel, so Stainless skate bearings don't last as long. Bummer!

Skateboard bearing specsreddit

Dry your bearings out as soon as you get home, and clean them often, and you will be fine. When you do re-grease them after cleaning, use a thicker grease to keep the water out.

Cleaning skateboard bearings is super easy. You need to strip all the old grease out, then clean the bearing, then grease them back up again. Check out our How To Clean Bearings Guide for a full step-by-step!

Any decent skate bearing from a reputable brand (hint - the ones who DON'T try to fob you off with ABEC ratings) will be fast, as long as the bearing is clean, lubricated and aligned properly in the wheel core. So really, the best skateboard bearings in the world are the ones that stay clean the longest.

Seriously??? We're into bearing weight now?? Well, we have actually been asked this, so we checked - and you save a little less than 0.5grams per bearing. We suggest you free yourself from the internet and Go Skateboarding instead of worrying about this.

Normal skate bearings need speed washers (or "speed rings") to stop the bearing from fouling on the axle nut or the hanger face.

"Hybrid" Bearings with Ceramic balls and steel races have a problem - Ceramic is around 30% harder than steel, so if you subject the bearing to a really big impact, the balls can actually permanently deform the steel races, leading to slower roll speeds and much faster bearing wear. Full Ceramics are even worse - so prone to cracking, in fact, that in industrial situations they are rated to around 25% of the top speed of an equivilent steel bearing for fear of sudden failure by craking. If you like to jump down stairs - get some Bones Big Balls or Super Swiss Six Balls instead.

Titanium is an amazing material - it's way lighter and tougher than steel. Unfortunately, it's very expensive as a raw material, and it's also savagely difficult to machine and form, due to its surface toughness.

The #1 thing that makes you enjoy skating more is you and your confidence on your board. If having posh bearings in your setup helps your confidence and stokes you out - then you'll probably skate faster.

So why would you bother with ceramics at all? Well in our minds, the major reason is for the placebo effect. If you spend a lot of money on your bearings, you'll feel faster, and feeling faster is the same as being faster. Having spent loads of money on bearings, you'd also probably also look after them, which makes way more of a difference than what the bearings are made of.

Bestskateboard bearing specs

If you don't skate in the wet, your bearings should last at least a year or two of cruising around, if not longer. If you do skate in the wet, make sure you clean your bearings regularly. For even better protection from the rain and road grime, pack your bearings out with a thicker grease.

The ABEC scale has five points - ABEC1, ABEC2, ABEC3, ABEC5, ABEC7 and ABEC9. As far as skateboarding is concerned, the shielding of the bearing is probably the most important single feature - and the ABEC scale doesn't cover shiedling arrangements.

"Swiss" bearings feature a deeper race than your average 608 bearing. This means that the whole bearing is better able to withstand sideloads, making Swiss bearings significantly longer lasting. Some other bearing brands call this type of bearing a "deep groove" race or similar.

So if you spend a load of money on some super-swanky bearings and it makes your board FEEL faster, then that's really the same as if your board ACTUALLY IS faster.

There's a reason that Bones Bearings, the world's best selling bearing company, don't make a shieldless bearing - they're not a good idea.

Sorry to bust your bubble, but really, they're not. In most bearings, about 60% of the drag is caused by the shield, and 30% is caused by the lubricant. Most of the rest of the drag comes from the cage itself - "ball deformation," which is caused by the balls microscopically defoming in the race (which is the very problem that ceramic bearings would solve), accounts for only 3% of the overall drag.

Skateboard bearing specschart

Skaters without bearing spacers might find it easier to just run their axle nuts a bit loose to keep the wheels spinning freely. This is even worse!

Second - you know that "test" that everyone does to check your bearings? You pick your board up and spin a wheel with your hand and see how long until it stops? IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING.

"Built In" or BuiltIn" skate bearings are just the same as a regular skate bearing - except that they feature an extended inner race on both the inside and the outside.

Bones Bearings use the "Swiss" name to demote their high-end skate bearings that are made in Switzerland, to higher tolerances, better shielding and using higher-grade materials than their regular "Reds" range of bearings. All Bones Swiss bearings come pre-lubed with Bones Speed Cream, and are the bearing to beat if you are looking to get the best out there.

If you could buy real 100% Titanium bearings, they would be amazing - super light and ridiculously long-lasting (and outrageously expensive!). But you can't, and the TiN coating doesn't any speed or durability, so don't be fooled.

Sometimes though, you will see bearings marketed at "Stainless." This means that the balls, and sometimes the races as well, are made from Stainless Steel rather than Chrome/Carbon steel. They're usually a little harder to find, and a little more expensive.

On the plus side, cleaning couldn't be easier - no need to even take your wheels off, just dump some bearing lube in there every session and you're good to go.

Once you’ve performed this basic wheel bearing test, you should have a better idea of where the problem is. Then, it’s a case of diagnosing the front or rear wheel on the side in question.

There's no need to take all this advice to heart. Skateboarding and longboarding are "touch and feel," how your board feels TO YOU is more important than anything else.

Suspect that your car is suffering from a faulty wheel bearing? Our guide can help you check and diagnose the problem, and decide if and when it’s still safe to drive.

Given the damage that can occur as a result of a failed wheel bearing, not to mention the dangers, this further reinforces the importance of getting those bearings checked and repaired the moment you realise there’s a problem.

"Swiss" bearings are a special kind of skateboard bearing with a deeper bearing race, and this does not necessarily refer to the place of manufacture. That said, all Bones Swiss bearings are actually made in Switzerland.

SkateboardBearings

Replacing all of your car’s wheel bearings might cost an eye-watering sum, but it’s guaranteed to be a lot cheaper than repairing the damage should a bearing fail.

It can be very counter-intuitive to ignore the marketing and the hype sometimes. But in our experience, spending on really good bearings doesn't really do much for your overall speed. Buying decent wheels or cleaning your existing bearings almost always makes a bigger difference. But hey... we're a shop... if you want to buy some rad fresh bearings, we've got what you need!

A wheel that is loose on the axle will give a noisy, chattery ride. Your bearings may roll faster for a session or two, but they will die way quicker as the side-to-side play becomes too much for the bearing to take.

Any bearing brand using this in their marketing should not be taken seriously and frankly need to have a long hard word with themselves!

Rubber shiedls are also much easier to remove for cleaning, which is really the secret to keeping your bearings fast. Some skate bearings have rubber shields one only one side so you don't even need to remove any shields for a quick clean. Perfect!

In our opinion, taking your shields off is pretty pointless - all that will happen is you will ruin your bearings faster. Yes, they will make a cool noise... but there is no speed increase over a "608ZZ", "608RS", "6082RS" bearing, and you WILL need to lube them ALL THE TIME.

Yes! And you don't need a special tool or bearing press to do it. Just use your axles as leverage, and apply twisting motion as if you are opening a bottle of beer. Check our guide here - how to change your wheels really fast!

Yes - but not as much as you'd think. 95% of the time, your choice of wheel urethane will make way more of a difference to your speed than your bearings.

Skateboard bearingsize 608

Most quality skate brands don't even have an ABEC rating. For example, Bones Bearings identify their bearings "skate rated" in a deliberate attempt to emphasise the irrelevance of the ABEC rating.

While we're here disseminating some Ceramic Bearing Truth, there's two claims that are sometimes made about ceramics that are patently not true:

Need to recap the signs of a failing wheel bearing? Here are the symptoms to watch out for while you’re driving, particularly when turning corners: