I can remember a time back in the late 80's when 99% of bearing sold in skate shops were GMN and NMB. The other 1% was Powell Swiss and they were super rare. Now it seems there are over a 100 different varieties.
The past week or so, there's been discussions about bearings at Skate and Annoy. I'm not convinced the ABEC rating system has anything to do with good skateboard bearings but I will admit the first set of generic ABEC 7's I had back in the early 90's were the fastest bearings I ever rode up to that point, although they felt loose, the shields fell off and they busted pretty fast. The best set of bearings I've ever had though were Powell Swiss as well as these Terminator T2 Pro Gold's a friend of mine gave me. Suckers were fast! I definitely prefer bearings with the removable nylon cage for easy cleaning and, in my experience, I think that design is better than a metal cage. Right now I'm riding some Powell Red's which seem pretty good. I do feel I have to clean and lube them a lot though. First post here is a bunch of info on bearings courtesy of RocknRon.
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Weird chain of events. Set up this post earlier in the week. Went skating yesterday and remember that my Reds were seizing up. Took all my wheels off and sure enough, couldn't even spin the damn bearings in my fingers.
Rewind several months ago... I found a set of rollerblades down in the garbage area of my condo. I spun the wheels and they seemed like they were still good. I took them out and they were labelled CS ABEC 3. They had that nice dry loose spinny thing going on. I originally took them with the intention of giving them to my friends son for his board (he's got some department store set up with really bad wheels and bearings). Never got around to doing that so I took them and slapped them in my wheels. Really surprised how good and fast they are. I guess I'll see how long they last.
I always use Speed Metal bearings. I'm a little surprised you can still buy them, but I just got a new set and they are fast. The shields kept popping off on the last set I had and I would just turn the bearings around so a shielded side was facing out. I think these bearings also went through two seasons of winter and spring dirt. Somehow they were the fastest bearings I've ever had.
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