Has anyone used ceramic motorcycle wheel bearings?

[Old Can Ride]

Today the professional race bikes are using ceramic motorcycle wheel bearings. Ceramic by its nature is lighter than steel by about 2/3 the weight; it is harder than steel when it is in ball form and it is virtually frictionless because it is non-porous. A ceramic hybrid bearing has steel races with ceramic balls and a full ceramic bearing has ceramic races and balls. Full ceramic and ceramic hybrid wheel bearings are particularly well suited to both competitive and recreational motorcycle applications.

It seems to me that for adventure riding the ceramic motorcycle wheel bearings would be great, but is the cost justified?

 

[MZ5]

For an adventure bike, would the idea be to liberate a couple hundredths of a horsepower? Or add a couple miles of range per tank?

I love the concept.

Is there a durability comparison available in high-shock/compression loading such as in an off-road scenario?

 

[Old Can Ride]

Durability would be the reason, as the dirt racers sure do swear by them. I have no durability comparison, and was hoping someone on the forum would have some experience in the dirt with these bearings.

 

[Mr_Krabs]

Ceramic sounds nice in theory, less friction lighter weight, but I do know I have remote control cars with them, and work in the aerospace industry so I know what they're made of. Silicon nitride. It's a brittle material, very strong, but still brittle. Bearing steel I can hit with a hammer and it'll bounce back. Silicon nitride material will take hits just as hard, but go one iota over it's failure point and it'll shatter like glass. I've had them simply shatter their races on my remote control cars where I knew steel bearings wouldn't. Casual dirt riders generally "swear" by lots of things that in the long term make no sense. And racing is a whole other issue altogether. Racing means needing to extract every ounce of performance even if it means sacrificing long term reliability. Note I say reliability, not durability. They're different concepts. The ceramic bearing will definitely be more durable in terms of miles but their reliability is a question mark as ceramics are finicky materials and just do not like hard impacts.

You can imagine it like those ceramic knives you can buy. They'll never go dull so long as you don't use them to cut anything hard like bones or frozen foods. If you do they simply chip their edges and go dull much faster than a comparatively "softer" steel knife. And if you drop the knife even from a short distance on say your granite countertop or hard flooring you'll be picking up knife pieces where a steel knife will simply bounce back.

Ceramic bearings when used within their performance envelope will definitely outlast steel but high impact and off roading does put more risk into it. While a steel bearing may deform and maybe squeal to show it's on it's last leg or has suffered damage, a ceramic one will work fine until the moment of it's failure where it fails catastrophically and leaves you stranded. Basically a decent steel bearing already has extremely long life and with a bike as low performance as the NC a ceramic bearing makes no sense.

Also never get ceramic hybrids with ceramic balls and a steel race. If any dirt or contaminants get in the ceramic balls will grind the dirt into the steel race and you'll find the bearing will get rough and sloppy really quick.

 

[Old Can Ride]

Thank you for the information. Most the pro racers I know are all are nothing. So, this makes good sense to me. Ceramic sounds like it is an all or nothing type deal to me, but it helps lower weight just that slight competitive advantage the racer is looking for.

 

[Jeff762]

In the trucking industry there is a lot of talk about low friction bearings to ad in fuel cost reduction. Microblue is only company I've heard of, I think its just a coating of sort. I'm sure the wheel bearing and engine bearing in any vehicle could be done, and would benefit from it.

MICROBLUE® - Low Friction Bearings, Engines, Transmissions, Differentials and Turbochargers