CELEBRATING 20 YEARS!

What is our best option these days? Timken had a nylon cage and made in China. National is made in China. Anything else I can think of is either rsboxed of the two or garbage. I bought the Nationals for now but I feel dirty.

The last set of Timken wheel bearing i installed were made in USA, 2015. Just had the front rotors off the car and the bearings looked great.

Today it's all a crap shoot, rare is their a choice of origin. You just try to get it as close to California as possible.
If i was going to do some wheel bearings or rear end bearing today i would be looking a Koyo bearing, should be still made in Japan and were noted as one of the best bearing available several years ago.

Previously always had used Timken in 4 rears I did and all the front wheel bearings i pressed into rotors. But even the SKF, BSA, National, Crown, NTN of the old days were good USA bearings. Now all just a name on a box from hopefully a manufacturing facility with quality control. To often what we get is not what we expect in products today.

Here's an interesting read about wheel bearings dated 2020 so it's pretty current. Except now you need to factor in their are a couple metals in short supply, like nickel, tantalum, cobalt, makes life a little more difficult now.
https://mzwmotor.com/wheel-bearing-manufacturers/

I have replaced several hubs on these new cars, 02-05 Ws, and had trouble with bearings not lasting on those replacements. From reading on some of the W car forums the choice was use a Delco replacement at the time, Japan bearings they said. The couple Moog hubs I installed were China. My daughter's 05 GP needs another front right hub replaced, bearing noise again. I think i replaced all four hubs on my 02 SS and 3 of 4 on her 05 GTP. That front hub in Delco is now 120+ at rock. So much for hubs being better than old open wheel bearings you greased wit ya fingers.

Have always used the National seals, what most suppliers locally would sell back in the day. Would think the Raybestos, Wagner, even Delco back in the day were just reboxed National seals.
Bob

Funny enough when I worked for NSK I got inner bearings that were meant for a high speed machine spindle.

Now I work for a different bearing manufacturer and I've learned a thing or two about bearings.

There are three brands of bearings I'd trust my life to - Timken, Schaeffler (Formerly INA/xxxx /LUK) and NSK.

The rest, including Koyo, NTN, BSA, Crown are all junk.

Keep in mind that the ONLY purpose of a bearing's cage is to separate the rollers. It is NOT a stressed component and in high speeds a plastic cage can create less self generating heat than steel cage. While it is true that a polyamide cage can fail at extreme temperatures if your brakes are that hot you're probably boiling the fluid.

One thing to note is that many of the parts in the box are actually made by other manufacturers, even if they come in a Timken or SKF box, they might actually be NSK bearings. Aftermarket parts megacorps only want to sign suppliers who offer a FULL line of bearings for every make and manufacturer, so rather than shell out the tooling for all of those parts, many are bought from the OEM manufacturer of the bearing, and repacked into an SKF, Drive (Formerly Federal Mogul/National), or Timken Box.[i][/i]