Ceramic bearing equipped bottom brackets or hybrid ceramics to be more precise are generally much more expensive than their stainless.
Ceramic vs steel bearings bottom bracket.
Initially the enduro bearing has lower friction at around 600km of use the ceramic bearing has worn a track into the comparatively soft steel races and the bearing friction starts to increase dramatically.
He was so frustrated with bottom brackets failing due to the heavy mud in belgian cyclocross races that he started buying whatever was the cheapest available.
There has been a lot of hype about ceramic bearings in recent years and many people claim they offer a performance upgrade.
The highest performing ceramic threaded bottom bracket outperformed the highest performing steel threaded bottom bracket made by hawk racing by less than 1.
However the ceramic bearing costs just short of twice as much as the hawk racing bearing.
Ceramic is not always better than steel.
At kogel bearings we believe ceramic bearings set the gold standard for your bicycle bottom bracket derailleur pulleys and wheel bearings.
The results illustrate the cost to benefit ration nicely.
Cost of purchase for ceramic and steel bearings.
There are bearings in the wheel hubs the headset bottom bracket pedals and jockey wheels and they re commonly made from steel.
The graph below shows a comparison between two steel bearings skf and ntn and a ceramic bearing enduro.
The silicon nitride used to make ceramic bearings combines a set of material properties that makes it perfect for bicycle bearings.
The results were new bearings for every single race a lot of work for stef and helen racing world cups on bearings similar to the.
The average frictional losses of the ceramic bottom brackets is 0 60 watts while the average frictional losses of the steel bottom brackets is 1 02 watts.
A bb30 bottom bracket that uses ceramic bearings will weigh 3 5 grams less than its stainless steel counterpart.