Timken quality has dropped drastically.

[ford46guy]

South Korea bearing is likely made by ILJIN http://www.iljin.com/English/index.asp

They are an OEM supplier, quality product. MOOG bearings used to be made by them, now they are made in China.

 

[Trav]

Originally Posted By: Chris142
Originally Posted By: Hemispheres
I'm not saying they have poor initial quality, the car rides better. However I'm saying there is a quality issue compared to the USA bearings.
I've already decided the driver front is getting a Moog when it goes.
you may find that moog was imported also. Maybe all this will change after the 20th?


Moog is owned by Federal-Mogul who owned National bearings for years but threw them under the bus when they filed chapter 11, they started reboxing/rebranding off shore made hubs and bearings and selling them under the Moog brand. These are not even close to the original National products that ere made in the USA and rivaled anyone's quality. There are a few original National bearings and Hubs in the wild that are boxed Moog but they are becoming less common.
Its worth a look especially for a domestic car where there was a large NOS supply but you have to look at the COO, if its USA its an original National if not its Chinese, Korean, Mexican or possibly Japanese but those are scarce as hens teeth.

Federal-Mogul also owns Beck Arnley, Fel Pro, Sealed Power, Speed Pro, Wagner, Anco and a few others, some other companies they left in peace for the most part like Fel Pro and Wagner and others they threw to the dogs loading part of their product line with junk. B&A suffers with this, once a great company with very high standards for the parts they sold now has a generous mix of super cheap rubbish thrown in for good measure like reboxed URO parts
Being a company that has a huge online presence this makes their product hit and miss, not a good position for the buyer, the assure of quality is gone, ditto some other companies they have their fingers in. Buyer beware, the high quality parts you buy today can be total junk the next time you buy them.

 

[mjk]

Hub assembly for my Tahoe, ordered through RA, was stamped "Made in America". MY mechanic was very impressed with the overall quality of it. He's had his issues with house brands in recent years.


Originally Posted By: Hemispheres
This has probably already been posted on here, however after replacing a wheel hub on my car yesterday I noticed Timken bearings highly resemble cheap Chinese [censored].

The bearing I replaced was also a Timken and lasted me 3 years/60k which is good considering GM FWD cars eat hub bearings like clockwork. Upon the new bearing arriving in the mail the first thing I noticed was the box didn't say Made in United States this time, it said Made in South Korea.

Upon removing the bearing I noticed the plastic bearing seal was a different color than the one I had purchased 3 years ago. Lastly after removing the tire I immediately noticed the S. Korea bearing has shorter studs (1-1.5 cm difference) and the center hub that the wheel and fits over is now tapered and therefore considerably thinner than the old Made in USA bearing.

I'm not really expecting to get more than a year out of this cheap labor bearing after poking around online have seen prime examples of their inferior quality. One was an F250 where both front Timken replacements had a HUGE amount of slop after only 500 miles, a couple others had catastrophic failures where the lugs snapped off (on heavy duty diesel pickups) and customers having to replace bearings every 10-14 months.

Just thought I'd get that out there so no one else wastes their money on a poor quality bearing being sold at high quality prices.

 

[cronk]

I just installed a Timken hub assemble on my Cavalier friday night. Was made in USA and nice quality.

OP is this for a W-body application (Impala, Monte Carlo, Century, Grand Prix)?
I put a Timken in a co workers Impala 2 or 3 years ago and it was made on Korea.
It held up fine until the car was recently junked due to undercarriage rot.

 

[ford46guy]

Originally Posted By: Trav
Originally Posted By: Chris142
Originally Posted By: Hemispheres
I'm not saying they have poor initial quality, the car rides better. However I'm saying there is a quality issue compared to the USA bearings.
I've already decided the driver front is getting a Moog when it goes.
you may find that moog was imported also. Maybe all this will change after the 20th?


Moog is owned by Federal-Mogul who owned National bearings for years but threw them under the bus when they filed chapter 11, they started reboxing/rebranding off shore made hubs and bearings and selling them under the Moog brand. These are not even close to the original National products that ere made in the USA and rivaled anyone's quality. There are a few original National bearings and Hubs in the wild that are boxed Moog but they are becoming less common.
Its worth a look especially for a domestic car where there was a large NOS supply but you have to look at the COO, if its USA its an original National if not its Chinese, Korean, Mexican or possibly Japanese but those are scarce as hens teeth.

Federal-Mogul also owns Beck Arnley, Fel Pro, Sealed Power, Speed Pro, Wagner, Anco and a few others, some other companies they left in peace for the most part like Fel Pro and Wagner and others they threw to the dogs loading part of their product line with junk. B&A suffers with this, once a great company with very high standards for the parts they sold now has a generous mix of super cheap rubbish thrown in for good measure like reboxed URO parts
Being a company that has a huge online presence this makes their product hit and miss, not a good position for the buyer, the assure of quality is gone, ditto some other companies they have their fingers in. Buyer beware, the high quality parts you buy today can be total junk the next time you buy them.





For the continental (fits Taurus too), I needed 2 rear hubs because the Abs tone wheel rotted out. OEMS still perfect, but no tone ring available. Got Moog because of convenience and advance auto discounts. One Moog was in a NOS national box, made in USA all beat up. Other was made in So Korea. National box had the tone ring pressed on too shallow(wasn't from abuse), and it interfered with the ABS sensor. Took back the part and they wanted to give me a nice new one made in China (like their house brand, Driveworks, but they are different parts with slightly different designs). The guy there said if I were you I would tap down the tone ring a bit, he said the China brands often come back in 6 months. He said the National will be on there 20 years from now. This is from the store manager! I did that and its fine for 5K miles so far.

 

[kschachn]

Originally Posted By: Hemispheres
My previous tires were Khumo which if I'm corrct are made in SK. This set only lasted 45k miles. They had an 80k mile warranty and I had an alignment and tire rotation done every 6-8k miles, so Korean [censored] will never get my approval.


Really? I have Kumho ECSTA tires on my BMW (I don't have a lot of options in the OEM size) and they have worked well. I have around 40,000 on them now and there's lots of tread left. Didn't you get warranty consideration on those tires?

 

[R18Civic]

I had khumo kr21s and yes they were covered by warranty but I wasnt going to take a chance on another set.

 

[Nick1994]

Originally Posted By: Hemispheres
I had khumo kr21s and yes they were covered by warranty but I wasnt going to take a chance on another set.
Tread life is drastically impacted by your commute. If you don't rive on curvy roads or a lot of city driving, your tires will wear MUCH faster than people who commute on straight highways.

Doesn't matter what brand of tire you have for that.

 

[R18Civic]

Most of my mileage has been highway driving. The tires wore as expected for about 20-25k miles then after that the tread just started shedding like mad. When I got the tires they were fairly new on the market and my previous vehicle had KH16 tires which lasted 60k. Due to how new they were the reviews were basically the initial "WOW" factor of having a new set of tires. About 10k miles in I stared noticing reviews pointing out how utterly poor quality they were. Sidewalls blowing off, broken and seperated belts and shorter than advertised tire life.
http://www.1010tires.com/Tires/Reviews/kumho/solus+kr21

To give you a general idea I purchased the vehicle used in 2012 with only 17.6K on the clock, as of tonight I'm at 108,7XX miles. I am very picky about the part I put on my vehicle. I've done about 90% of the upkeep myself and saved tons of money with RockAuto.

Every 6k she gets full synthetic oil change with Bosch Distance Plus Filters. At 50k I dropped the trans pan and changed the filter (waiting on spring weather to do it again since I'm replacing a trans cooler line with a slow leak), At 100k I installed new plugs and wires and have coil packs sitting in the garage in the event they [censored] out. Around 90k I replaced the water pump, At 75k I installed split ratio rocker arms and an aftermarket intake, Last fall I installed cold air induction box, followed by tubular log-style exhaust manifolds. This is the first like new vehicle I've purchased with my own money so believe me when I say the car is spoiled like a grandchild.

 

[R18Civic]

Double post.

 

[R18Civic]

Edit feature seems to be acting up, my apologies.

@Cronk

It's a 4th Gen Wbody, 09 Buick Lacrosse CX.

 

[Black_Thunder]

strange. I've only ever installed one timken bearing assembly and that was on my parent's 05 explorer a couple years ago and it appeared to be the same as the oem one that i removed.


other hub assemblies I've used that i've had luck with are Precision and National.

 

[RooflessVW]

OP rants about Korean tires and buys made in China Pirellis.

If you didn't like the hubs you shouldn't have installed them. Your time crunch is not the mfg's fault.

Top tip... Always buy F.A.G. or S.K.F. bearings!

 

[R18Civic]

Pirelli was bought out by a Chinese company but are manufactured elsewhere and are held up to higher standards.

 

[Trav]

If this is a GM W body you must use the latest revised torque spec on the axle nut or it will burn them out quickly regardless of who made it.

 

[R18Civic]

Originally Posted By: Trav
If this is a GM W body you must use the latest revised torque spec on the axle nut or it will burn them out quickly regardless of who made it.


118 ft lbs, correct? I used it on the old bearing no issues.

 

[Trav]

Correct 118 ft lb, they will last longer than original which was 131 ft lb IIRC. There are many specs out there on different websites and old aftermarket service manuals, everything between 131 and 175 ft lb.

 

[berniedd]

Originally Posted By: Hemispheres
They thread right on but the unthreaded portion of the stud is much shorter on the SK bearing vs the USA bearing. Essentially not made up to OEM Specs. The studs don't protrude past the end of the lug nuts like the old bearing did when fully torqued down. Therefore about 1/8 inch of female threads on the lug nuts are grabbing onto nothing.


You have a safety problem right there. The first two turns of the threads of a bolt or stud are considered imperfect and hence should protrude out of (and not used by) the lug nut once torqued down. Since you mentioned the final 1/8 inch of the lug nuts don't hold onto anything, consider their clamping power diminished and not up to spec.

 

[R18Civic]

Originally Posted By: berniedd
Originally Posted By: Hemispheres
They thread right on but the unthreaded portion of the stud is much shorter on the SK bearing vs the USA bearing. Essentially not made up to OEM Specs. The studs don't protrude past the end of the lug nuts like the old bearing did when fully torqued down. Therefore about 1/8 inch of female threads on the lug nuts are grabbing onto nothing.


You have a safety problem right there. The first two turns of the threads of a bolt or stud are considered imperfect and hence should protrude out of (and not used by) the lug nut once torqued down. Since you mentioned the final 1/8 inch of the lug nuts don't hold onto anything, consider their clamping power diminished and not up to spec.


This is probably why I'm seeing pics of new timken bearings snap the studs clean off the hub.

 

[R18Civic]

Delivering pizza is brutal... Pass rear just went out. Grinding noise that gets worse with speed and I can smell burning lastic/rubber from said wheel after a spirited drive.