Swansen

So, i did a lot of looking around before hand, normally i'd just buy what i know is 'good' but, was a little time constrained and any local auto either was only selling the cheapest import, or, overpriced name brand. Anyhow, Nachi and Koyo are available on ebay for wholesale price, but, would have taken a week to get here potentially, 60$ a pair. found some SKF bearings i was happy with, got them here, they are Koyo's... for twice the price of the koyo's alone..

like a lot of the name brand bearings, there are different 'lines', you essentially get what you pay for, a lot of the times you'll get parts manufactured in facilities anywhere in the world and assembled wherever, outer race from mexico, inner race from china, ***** from skf. well, 'higher end' seems like either oe units or all 'in house stuff'.

my point in this.. just make a note i guess, 120$ for koyo's in a skf box, 60$ for koyo's in a koyo box(and three days wait...). lol

blackeg

just installed an sfk front bearing last week on my si. i was too frustrated with the duralast's from autozone going bad in a year's time so i went to napa. they had the koyo at a hub store but the sfk was in stock. i didnt notice if it said koyo on it, but the entire housing was all metal, unlike some other bearings that have a rubber strip between the inner and outer race. the sfk was i think 68 bucks and the koyo just north of 60 bucks, but like you it was all about availability and getting the thing in quickly. so far so good. damn oem bearings are between 100 and 150 i think now.

Swansen

Honda was using Koyo as OEM for a little while, but yeah, i noticed that also, OEM bearings came down in price.

yeah, your experience is the reason i wasn't worried about spending money, not something i wanted to repeat any time soon. SKF make solid bearings, i used them in industrial applications and DIY stuff before, always happy, but, they do have different lines. They just want that chunk of change, so, is someone wants to pay $20 for a bearing, SKF will provide an 'economy' bearing in their box. However, i guess this isn't exclusive to SKF, TIMKEN also does this. but, it was FW-104, NSK uses the same part number, both are koyo units, which can be had for $60 a set direct from koyo, SKF and NSK will charge double for the same bearing with their name on it.

consensus seems to be with bearing, we get what we pay for. again, i was just in a hurry, otherwise i would have ordered the koyo direct.(on that, those OEM honda units are are either Koyo or NTN, with a honda badge on the box)

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oh also, SKF makes some pretty sweet bottom brackets for bicycles, they are pretty much top of the line quality(not cheap tho)