Quote:
Originally Posted by iamtrashman
Not to throw any fuel on the fire, I already have BE/ARP stuff installed in my car, but if you look closely at that photo does it not look like the coating is coming off toward the parting lines? I dont think that is a red reflection from whatever it is sitting on.
And if I am understanding the Mahle paper correctly, maybe that coating coming off is just normal bearing behaviour and not a cause for concern anyway.
Anyway, I dont have much of a horse in this race, I dont feel like changing my bearings to BE is going to cause my engine to explode, but lets be honest about how much data we have about "good" looking aftermarket bearings coming out of engines. What is it, 0.1% (being pretty generous here) as many photo examples as we have of used OEM bearings?
The OEM ones don't visually look great coming out of engines especially with high miles but SOME of them actually do look alright, I think it would be silly to say that isnt the case, unless we saw as many aftermarket ones come out and had just as many visual examples, the 3-5 images of used ones I have seen seem to have a looooot of faith riding on them.
Just some food for thought. I still am of the opinion that I havent seen many factory bearings come out "looking" good. Whether or not they were all about to fail I dont have the expertise to say.
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IIRC the PTFE coating will come off over time. 40K race miles and these look pretty good.
My OE 088/089 bearings looked about as good as you could ask for. But it is all statistics. Some people got lucky. Others got boned. Not every OE engine will blow up - that is for sure. BUT, until you look, you do not know. And given the work it takes to look, you might as well throw some proper clearance bearings in there.
As for the examples of good proper clearance bearings - the sample size is minimal but promising. Also, no one has ever had an S65 blow up as a result of rod bearings when using properly sized bearings.
I put my BE bearings in at 30TKM and I am now at 94TKM. Perhaps I will get bored some day and open the engine up to look. Sounds like a good winter project next year - give me a chance to replace all the suspension bushings and install some Bilstein B6s
Cheers,
Cheers,