I hate how all bearings besides the OEM are made in China now. Ordered a "F@G" brand (actual name, German company), and returned it because the picture showed the actual bearing being made by Koyo in Japan. When I got it, the actual bearing was blank and the country of origin was China. Timken, SKF, NSK, NTN, all overseas now IIRC. Now it's my understanding that the Chinese made aftermarket bearings work fine for a lot of vehicles. I knew someone who owned a Jeep and claimed the cheaper ones lasted longer than the expensive ones. Supposedly the Prius uses slightly different wheel bearings to increase rolling resistance and the aftermarket can't quite get it right, leading to failures. Since there are so many fake Toyota OEM parts on eBay, the bearing at the dealership parts counters on the internet is $245-$300. But when you can get a new aftermarket on Rockauto for $45, you can literally replaced these 5 times at the cost of a new OEM one.
Right, so... Do you want to? I didn't. A mechanic installed something cheap on our car, and that bearing failed a few thousand miles later. I replaced it myself with the $300 Toyota bearing and fired that mechanic. Just not worth the hassle & downtime.
I ordered a couple SKF bearings late last year (from the SKF distributor on one market site). I couldn't figure out why, but they split the order into two shipments, landing here on two different days. One was stamped Made in China, the other not stamped at all. The one stamped Made in China looked better, but cheaper than the other one, which had obvious signs of overheating (uneven bluing of the metal) during the manufacturing/machining process. I sent those back to the distributor and got my money back. I went to the SKF distributor on another internet site, where they listed the bearings Made in Japan. One came in a box labeled Made in China (and looked a lot like the unmarked bearing I'd gotten before). The other one was in a box that looked like it had spent some time being moved around in some warehouse. It was also unmarked. The one in the box labeled Made in Japan spun better. I tried to get hold of the seller, to no avail. I called up the customer service to the internet marketplace and talked to them. They got the seller to send me another Made in Japan SKF bearing. Those were the two I finally put on my car. It's a good thing I'm retired and can have a car up on jackstands inside my garage for over a month, waiting on parts. Yeah, not happy about the whole situation. I think next time I'll be going with the OEM.
Just about every old man mechanic I meet is convinced Asian bearings are bad and just about every young mechanic I know has never given it a second thought. If there was some actual data comparing all the different options and manufacturers we could have an intelligent conversation, but with bearings it's really hard to understand who makes what and when. It changes with every order it seems. So as near as I can tell the Chinese/asian bearing issues is just a grumpy old man issue that hasn't been substantiated with data...
^Just editorial, think you meant this? My 2 cents: while there "may" be some credence to quality variation by country-of-origin, it's definitely not a hard-and-fast rule. Less so as time goes by.
Most of you arent going back to originals The car should be toast by then and put them on it like 300,000 and the car should be dead at $600 or some thing along those lines.
I just finished replacing my front drivers side bearing. I was going to go with MOOG but told by the auto-shop who pressed the bearing out that they are no longer made in America and I might as well buy the cheapest bearing because they are all made by the same companies. The MOOG front bearing is around $180 btw. I just went with NAPA house brand for 100
Pressed out nothing gets pressed out in the Prius front hub or undoing bolts and smacking it with a hammer My older Corollas are press fit and need a press with like 20 tons or something to push the mess apart but the Prius requires none of that.
The original front wheel bearings on our Prius failed at about 70k miles. The aftermarket replacements lasted 70k miles. We're on our third set, and I won't be surprised if they fail at 70k miles. Here in tthe rust belt, galvanic corrosion locks the bearing tight into the knuckle. My shop has had to pull the knuckle more often than not to get the bearing out.
Well when I lived in Western Massachusetts that was before the Prius I guess wheel bearings yeah made about 70 to 100,000 mi in those conditions if the car was outdoors which back then I didn't own a garage so it was so I guess that goes right along with your mileage statement here then I moved to the southeast United States where I had family and all of those problems went away immediately and wheel bearings last 200,000 miles pretty easily down here over here or whatever the case may be so weather has a lot to do with all of this stuff
I'm sure climate is a factor in short wheel bearing life. It certainly affects the difficulty of bearing replacement. The Prius is still wife's daily, and it has been garaged since we bought it in 2012. The bearings are the only recurrent trouble spot.
It could be someone returned a no name bearing and kept the original SKF? I know oil filter switching at Walmart is ridiculous, people have no honesty, some. I recently bought a Proto ratchet. I got a very beat up obviously used for years thing. Completely stripped gear. Amazon, and I returned it to continue the cycle of nonsense. People will start to exploit the easy return process.
Oh yeah I didn't notice this was a generation 3 so yeah then you're into the 2010 and above manufacturing cycle which seemingly is a lot cheaper than what it was so maybe that's a thing I've replaced some of the generation threes with the TRQ bearings and I'm using they seem to be doing well they're made about as cheaply as the originals looks like so we'll just have to see $49 is a far cry from 200 plus
