hey guys, just wondering what you guys think of this hub bearing assembly.

www.primechoiceautoparts.com

or if in canada

www.primechoiceautoparts.ca

The hub and bearing is only 52.00 CAD or 44.00 US. Being that I'm in Canada, it's the cheapest option available. I've checked out rock auto, but i'm looking at pricey shipping. prime choice seems to have free shipping on orders 50$ or more - in US or Canada

Part #: HB613092

 

Have you tried napa or parts source?

 

Timkin makes a bearing with a 3 year warrany that is as good or better then the original. If I read the warranty right that part only has 6 month warranty, thats half the warranty autozone gives on their china knock offs.

 

Well, I already ordered them so guess i'll be the ginea pig on this one.. lol 100 bucks shipped to my door, good price. Speedy shipping too, got a tracking number 1/2 hour after I placed my order. Description on these also said "meets or exceeds OEM" gotta be better then my stock, 13 year old hubs anyway... Guess we'll see..

Might be the exact same as the rest anyway, I know a lot are, just branded different

 

thats the same place as auto parts warehouse, they seem to have good suff.

 

I will bet they are Chain knockoffs. They were most likely bought them 85% done and primechoise just assemble them and they can say they made them. Meets or exceeds OEM is a very open ended comment. There is no way you can call that a lie without having and understanding both the OEMs and their processes. We have seen a lot of these China knock offs last 6 months. But it is luck of the draw.

 

I try to buy GM parts when it comes to hub/bearing assemblies because the China stuff is junk. On GM front wheel drive stuff the originals last 10 years or more and then you install the parts store stuff. A year later the bearing has play. There's a reason the GM parts are a lot more expensive.

 

This is just my opinion but as long as bearing is from one of the big three, Timkin, SKF or NTN it is going to be a good bearing. I would have had Federal Mogul in there but they sold off their roller bearing div. These manufactures know how to make a bearing and have the equipment and the facilities to do it right. These are also the guys that make most of the OEM wheel bearings and hub assemblies for GM. GM has no clue how to make a bearing they just know who to go too. So when I say China knock offs I mean a company that does not (IMO) know how to make a bearings. Case hardened cheap steel vs 52100 thru hardened steel. I could go into detail on how they “cut costs” but it would bore everyone. I have run tests on knock off bearings and the first one I checked failed a noise test. Per our QA system at NTN there is a 1 in 1.9 million chance of finding a bearing with that level of noise in it in one of our shipments. In fact had I ever found a bearing that bad there would have been a root cause project after the lot of parts were pulled
Sad part is all three of these manufactures have sites in China and since those sites have the right engineering backing them they make a nice product. At this point most truly high volume parts are being made in China. SKF still has numerous manufacturing sites in the US but these are limited to medium and low volume runs. Parts like mast bearings for forklifts and paper mill bearings and of course military parts.

 

Is NTN the "National" brand? IIRC National is the brand I got at Advance Auto the last time I had problems. $99 each. Olds Ninety-Eight bearings lasted less than a year.

 

No NTN is a Japanese company. The NTN does not stand for anything we would understand, At least that is what my japanese counter part told me. The group I worked for was NTN-BCA, it no longer exists. It was absorbed by NTN-America. If you troll their site you will see very quicky they make a lot of high end bearings.

Automotive | NTN Bearing Corporation of America