VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND NEWER 1949-1954 bearings roller or tapered

looking at my filling station catalog and found they have 2 types of bearing listed for 50 car.question is is it better to go with the new style tapered roller bearing or stick with the original ball bearing i am leaning towards the tapered but would like to hear from others who have gone with i guess the newer improved tapered roller thanks

Roller bearings have a larger contact area so tend to wear less and also provide more lateral stability. Balls have worked for over 100 years so they will do the job for several more lifetimes.

I thought I heard you could tell the difference (in lateral stability) by the way the car handles with tapered roller bearings...Not that I'm about to change them out...And that you should grease ball bearings more often...Like every year or so...

When properlyadjusted there will be no difference in steering/handling.

In the '50s, I was taught that ball bearings were "OK" and that roller bearings were a "quality upgrade" and the best you could get. Personally, I still feel that to be the facts of the matter (although the '41 still runs on balls).

"To each his own".

How much are you really going to drive your car in a year? If you are like me I don't drive it alot, so the extra expence wouldn't be worth it. Are your current bearing bad? If not, just repack them and will be good for many miles.

after reading our club members views on tapered or ball bearings am going to stick with the originals ball bearings i dont drive the car that much so the ball type bearings will do just fine thanks

Ball bearings are just like tires and brakes. If you take care
of them, they will take care of you and last a long time.

Anyone:

Is the right terminology Roller or Tapered Bearing?

Comment: It is my understanding, after this subject has gone around for some time, that the roller bearings are somewhat better then ball bearings. The difference may be slight and the cost prohibitive, depending on the amount of use/advantage you'd get out of a switch.

Charlie

BTW: I seem to have heard that 1955 front bearings were lacking in some way. Anyone ever heard of that. I don't know what the deal was.

FWIW, I drive my ol' car a lot, when the weather is decent.

In Germany (army) '60-'62, the motor pool had trouble with front wheel bearings (ball) on several '57 Chevy staff cars. 'Couldn't get decent ball or roller bearings. We had roller bearings sent to us from the US (out of our own pockets). These did a fine job in the Chevys.

Balls are OK to a point. However, if rollers were not better than balls, GM would not have gone to 'em as vehicle speeds increased. Til then, ball bearings were used because of the "bean counters" saving GM millions of bucks.

Yeah, a lot of us are still running balls successfully.

I was a little surprised the first time I went to check my bearings...They were a bit on the dry side ( I wash off all the old grease before I use new ) There condition was fine, but what I found amusing was that the anti-static disc's for the radio were still in place...

Charlie-in answer to your question it's both-tapered roller bearings are used for wheel bearings. There are also straight roller bearings and spherical roller bearings.

Note that all modern cars with sealed bearings use ball bearing. The balls are much larger that what an old wheel bearing has.

The rear wheels from 1955-1964 were ball bearings. The heavy duty/taxi option was roller bearings.

Here is some info on the roller bearings.

Sorry, Link did not work.

I will try again. Scroll down link and read.

http://chevytalk.org/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/249810/

True you can almost always save $ by getting the bearing number/s and going to a bearing supplier. Also, they can readily supply bearings that are very hard to find (and expensive!) from automotive sources.

Even then, in years gone by, I have seen occasions where it was better not to tell 'em it was an automotive application. It doesn't matter so long as you have the bearing number/s. In most cases, the same applies to seals.

Check out " locateballbearings.com" They advertise a 200 million dollar inventory and if they don't have it they will find it for you while giving an excellent price. I got differential bearings for my 51 from them and they were half the price of some of our common suppliers.

Steve, thanks for the tip.