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I think I paid $10-$15 each on the bearings. Amazon does have them for $40 though so I guess I got a good deal...or the price of bearings has just gone way up since I did them.
Hey, if you can machine parts and care all that much, sure maybe your time isn't worth it and spending $15 extra to get the good materials is worth it to you. Otherwise, spend the $300 for Cusco or be content with a lower quality part that will still probably be just fine. Lets face it, if the spherical bearing sees water at all, it's probably going to self-destruct quickly even if it is an Aurora bearing.
I just killed a spherical bearing in a top mount in 1 year...open bearings don't like daily use, no matter how good they are.
All the bearings (hiems, uniballs) on the front of my off-road truck went 20k miles without issue before I took it off the street. The spherical bearings in the shocks went triple that and they aren't worn out. Idk how you ruin a set in a year.
Uniball/spherical bearing at the top of the knuckle sees more axial load then your top hat could ever imagine. Yes, it's 1" instead of the likely 1/2" or 5/8" ball at your top hat. But that 4 piston Wilwood clamping that 13" rotor with race pads, stopping a 115lb 35" tall tire while diving into braking bumps and clacking the suspension off the bump stops makes up for it being bigger.
My point is that I think you got a random bad bearing.
Had a discussion about bearings on a local track forum....
IF you've ever heard of SPL parts, they make the best custom suspension parts for nissans, and they're all QA bearings. I suggest you read the thread here ... but i'll quote out some stuff for you
To be polite, whoever had that opinion on the bearings is full of crap. I've used all three, and not noticed much of a functional difference in them other than the price. I'd honestly say QA1s have the tighter quality/process control. Their breakaway torque over hundreds of joints has been pretty consistent. Auroras are all over the place, ranging from too loose to install, to too tight for many thousands of cycles to break them in. The worst part is they cost significantly more. FKs are somewhere in between on both quality and price IMO.
As for a press fit in production arms, it's a hit or miss thing IMO, and you're relying on the factory keeping their tooling in good shape which is not always the case. But you never know until you try on a large (>10 sets) sample that are machined to a very tight (+/- 0.0005") tolerance.
A plain PTFE liner will pound out with high shock loads.
All my bearings on the truck are FK, including the pivots on the 4 link rear suspension. Never had issues with them. I do cycle out the bearings on the upper links every 5k miles regardless of how they feel because they take all the abuse of maintaining pinion angle.
Last edited by letsgetthisdone; Jan 22, 2016 at 07:22 AM.
If you are quoting me on saying they should be basically a hand press fit, you have taken what I said out of context. I said that the control arm bore is likely highly out of round. Getting a correct fit is extremely difficult and not something you can repeat with a mass produced part if they are consistently out of round. THUS...if you knock them out with a very light fit and use Loctite shaft seal IN THE APPLICATION OF THE FRONT JOINT IN THE LCA...you are on the right path.
As for the rest of what Def is saying, good stuff. I never knocked down QA1 as honestly, I've never used them. I generally trust Aurora simply because I trust American manufacturers for using quality materials over any other. If QA1 has a reputation for delivering quality stuff though, by no means would I avoid them. I've looked at a few of their things though and they've always been on the "hrm...not sure" so I error on the brands I know.
letsgetthisdone, possibly. I'm also running 680 springs with shocks sitting at 60% critical damping on compression. I'd bet the bearings in my top hats are likely seeing higher impact loads. Like Def pointed out, probably pounded them loose as they are PTFE lined bearings. I've always thought the linerless Chinese bearings in most top hats were garbage (because they are, but from a materials perspective) but that's also probably why I've never really had on loosen up on me on a top hat. I have had them corrode up and get VERY stiff though. Not very ideal either.
If you are quoting me on saying they should be basically a hand press fit, you have taken what I said out of context. I said that the control arm bore is likely highly out of round. Getting a correct fit is extremely difficult and not something you can repeat with a mass produced part if they are consistently out of round. THUS...if you knock them out with a very light fit and use Loctite shaft seal IN THE APPLICATION OF THE FRONT JOINT IN THE LCA...you are on the right path.
As for the rest of what Def is saying, good stuff. I never knocked down QA1 as honestly, I've never used them. I generally trust Aurora simply because I trust American manufacturers for using quality materials over any other. If QA1 has a reputation for delivering quality stuff though, by no means would I avoid them. I've looked at a few of their things though and they've always been on the "hrm...not sure" so I error on the brands I know.
letsgetthisdone, possibly. I'm also running 680 springs with shocks sitting at 60% critical damping on compression. I'd bet the bearings in my top hats are likely seeing higher impact loads. Like Def pointed out, probably pounded them loose as they are PTFE lined bearings. I've always thought the linerless Chinese bearings in most top hats were garbage (because they are, but from a materials perspective) but that's also probably why I've never really had on loosen up on me on a top hat. I have had them corrode up and get VERY stiff though. Not very ideal either.
Yea, that's some stiff suspension...lol. The FK is lined, not sure if it's plain old ptfe though.
Are the out of round control arm holes something that could be reamed to round so that making a bearing sleeve would be easier?
I don't know what a highly skilled machine shop could pull off effectively, or what they would charge. I had a co-worker offer to help me out initially. He's got two mill centers and a CNC knee mill in his house that he runs a side business with it and he has like 25 years of machining experience. Once he actually saw it and saw how difficult it would be to position correctly and hold, well...he made it out to be like he could get it done but I didn't want to take up his time for something he would do for free.
From there, I took it to a friends house with a CNC knee mill and a manual lathe. Honestly, I'm pretty sure his knee mill and tooling could not hold the +/-0.0002" or so tolerances you'd need to "properly" install a spherical bearing. But beyond that, both my arms had about 0.005" out of round so the accuracy of his machine was a far second in my mind. (Keep in mind, my car has under 60k miles, almost all of it on 300+ tread life tires and has never had any kind of off-road excursions or anything that might have damaged the arms.)
I simply machined the spacers on the mill and intentionally made them about 0.001" tight. From there I just tweaked them a little at a time on the lathe.
Ideal situation, you JIG the arm up, ream/mill the bore round and to the correct size and machine in circlip retaining grooves while you are there. I think there was a bearing size that was like 0.020" larger then the bore so just big enough to let you clean up the bore but not lose strength in the arm. Of course, if you screw it up though you've trashed the arm where with an insert, you toss the insert and start over.
I'm very curious about the cusco piece though. To me, it seems like either you have to press these in on the tight side and rely on wear in the liner to allow easy movement. Or you do what I did, get them so they are just slightly loose and then rely on some other means to hold them in position to keep them from making noise. Maybe they have some minor amount of taper in the sleeve or something that allows the bearing to get a press fit but not over tight?
Hell, maybe step the OD in a few thousandth right around where the bearing is? Then you rely on the edges of the sleeve to hold the sleeve in the arm and then the center "floats" slightly so it doesn't mess with the bearing clearances? You'd press the bearing into the sleeve first, then the sleeve into the arm.
So black is bearing sleeve (highly exaggerated on notch area) and the gray is the exaggerated deflection due to the press fit on the outer edges. Red is bearing outer race, blue is circlips, orange is the inner bearing spacers. Purple is the inner bearing race.
Idea being the notch in the middle keeps the inner diameter from changing when you press the sleeve into the arm. I think it would work, just a matter of figuring out the exact profile through some testing. Tapper the inner bore as well so once you press it in, you can still get the bearing out...
Currently running Robispec pieces but have a set of CUSCOs kicking around.
The CUSCO piece comes with instructions (in Japanese) to spotweld or probably rather silver solder the bearing sleeve into the LCA. However, Loctite would probably work as well ... or combination of the two.
On an old historic race car I own that has factory sphericals, the sleeves are undersize and are brazed into the suspension arms.
Originally Posted by 03whitegsr
I'm very curious about the cusco piece though. To me, it seems like either you have to press these in on the tight side and rely on wear in the liner to allow easy movement. Or you do what I did, get them so they are just slightly loose and then rely on some other means to hold them in position to keep them from making noise. Maybe they have some minor amount of taper in the sleeve or something that allows the bearing to get a press fit but not over tight?
Good to know. There is aluminum "brazing" rod that you can get too. Not sure it would wick into the piece though or not.
Spot welding on it could be pretty interesting. Some of the OEM aluminum pieces weld like crap; other parts have welded pretty well though. The arms are probably pretty clean aluminum, but you don't really know until you try it. Aren't the Cusco pieces anodized blue or something though?
Last edited by 03whitegsr; Jan 25, 2016 at 12:04 PM.
Cusco look like zinc plated steel. They have a shoulder and come with seals. Also see spotwelding instructions in Japanese.
Robispec were stainless from memory.
Originally Posted by 03whitegsr
Good to know. There is aluminum "brazing" rod that you can get too. Not sure it would wick into the piece though or not.
Spot welding on it could be pretty interesting. Some of the OEM aluminum pieces weld like crap; other parts have welded pretty well though. The arms are probably pretty clean aluminum, but you don't really know until you try it. Aren't the Cusco pieces anodized blue or something though?
Jan 21, 2016, 12:30 PM
