RE: Wheel bearing shopping

[Jason A Whyte <Jason.Whyte@dreco.com>]

Not having read the original question about the bearings in question,
I'm kind of going out on a limb to throw in my two cents worth.  I'm an
engineer and work for a design/manufacturing company which uses a wide
variety of bearings for many applications.  Unless you're talking about
a very obscure or vintage automobile, bearings for virtually every part
of the vehicle are available through a "good" bearing supply house.
It's not equitable for a bearing manufacturer to design and produce a
limited number of a specific bearings for a specialized application,
such as a particular part of a particular car.  To keep costs low for
both the bearing manufacturer and the car company, designers always try
to stay with existing bearing designs which are readily available.  I
have never purchased a bearing through either the dealer or an import
parts store.  I've always found the "equivalent" bearing at a lower
price through a bearing house.  These include wheel bearings,
transmissions bearings, upper strut thrust bearings, etc. for the four
Audi's I have owned.

For sure, you will run across the odd automotive bearing which will be
hard to find.  My experience has been, with the manufacturer name and
the bearing number, you'll almost always be able to find the replacement
without paying dealer or parts store markup.

Jason

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	John Larson [SMTP:jdlarson@ix.netcom.com]
> Sent:	Monday, December 07, 1998 7:42 PM
> To:	quattro@coimbra.ans.net
> Subject:	Wheel bearing shopping
> 
> Burl, and the list. Most automotive specific bearings are not
> generally
> available through bearing supply houses, which carry (or have access
> to)
> general purpose bearings. Standard bearings are often used in
> automotive
> applications and would be available through these channels, but
> specialized, one application only, bearings would not be available.
> For
> example (an obscure one, I admit) there was a transmission bearing
> used
> in pre 1959 Porsches that was a standard general use bearing with an
> added groove for a snap ring. You could get the bearing through almost
> any auto parts or bearing house for a fraction of the price, but it
> wouldn't work for this application without the groove.
> It has been my experience that the generic parts stores often sell
> re-boxed European and Japanese bearings, generally at a substantial
> markup. One example of this is my after normal business hours purchase
> of a Rabbit front wheel bearing at Kragen's, one of those omnipresent
> chain auto parts stores guaranteeing the lowest price anywhere. The
> price? $56. Dealer list about $34, foreign car parts store, $18,
> regular
> American car parts store, reboxed at about $42. We pay about $12 from
> the foreign parts WDs.
> You'll have a hard time finding  your bearing anywhere but a foreign
> car
> parts or service specialist or the dealer as it is used on relatively
> few cars, although more than just Qs. The regular 5Ks after  early
> '86,
> 100s, and some 200 w/ auto trans, as well as Qs use this bearing.
> HTH, John