Hey all,
I was wondering if anyone had any experience using the SKF bearing system for their axles.
We had a kart under the tent with them in a few years ago. I wasn’t a big fan in terms of actual usability, as they made the axle change a little more of a pain. There’s been plenty of debate on here about the value of ceramic bearings, but for me it isn’t worth the price or headache.
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Thanks for the feedback!
Here’s another topic on the subject:
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I have them on my kart currently. Getting the inner collar to release isn’t as easy as some of the videos make it seem. They seem to spin for longer than the standard bearings we used to use. If the kart chassis that we bought didn’t have them on there when we got them, it’s not an expense we would have gone with.
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I dug into the SKF site & found they can be had with either steel or ceramic bearings. I like the idea of the axle locking collar in lieu of biting into the axle with pinch bolts, but I can see how they’d be less convenient to access.
I have them on one kart, and I’d never buy them again. The (large amount of) money they cost can go to much more useful/practical things. As pointed out before, the collets are not as easy to release as advertised. They take multiple whacks and require WD-40 if the axle has been on there a while. The removable red seals remove themselves after a while and either get hung up or fall off. If you don’t have the lock bolts evenly torqued, the axle will not spin freely. Plus, if you have someone else wrenching the kart at some point, they might not know how to deal with them. The stock bearings on OTK karts spin as freely or better. The only reason to get the SKF is if you really can’t stand set-screw marks on your axles.
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