I work with printing machines in EU and I’ve been using those FAG ones as a spare bearing for as long I can remember as we have tons of them lying around. Those are your typical indystrial bearing, you can get some more speed out of them if you pop them shields and change some speed cream for lubricant but no way you can get them as fast as swiss...
The GMNs were what everyone had back when I was young. You dreamed about getting swiss, but they were unrealistically expensive for a 12 year old so it was germans. These days I don't think I skate fast enough that it really matters what I have. I'm riding reds currently and they suit my needs just fine.
Yeah I got them mostly because I wanted to see if there was any validity to the claims made by the purveyor of Rock em' Sock em' Ronald's Cock Rockin' Knee Knockin' Shockin' Pocket Rockets™. There's so much marketing hype and misinformation on the topic of bearings and I wanted to kind of de-mystify it all. I've been saying for a while that just because a bearing is cheap and made in china it doesn't mean it's bad. I have a set of Flip HKD 7's that are better than my swiss, and I just bought a set of $8 bearings on amazon that are incredibly smooth and fast - I thought they accidentally sent me ceramics at first because they were so quiet. Plus GMN were the first bearing upgrade I ever purchased so that was a bit of a nostalgia thing too.
My first impression is that they're both good bearings, but the FAGs are the better of the two. They aren't crazy fast like 6 ball swiss but what they do seem to be really good at, especially the FAGs, is holding speed once you've built it up. They take a little bit of time to warm up, but once you're going you can definitely coast longer than with reds. There's a little hill on my way home from work that I hit and can usually coast for a fair bit on before I start pushing, but with these I was able to coast significantly longer and actually only stopped because I hit an intersection. I don't know if thats because of the thicker lube or because they're just a better bearing, but once I've got them broken in and have a good idea of what to expect I'll break them down and clean the lube out, then try them with speed cream to give me a better idea.
Also just throwing it out there but if you can grab a hand full of those bearings from work without anyone noticing you could probably make some good side cash selling them on ebay. I'd definitely buy another set.
Topic: Skate Shit you've Bought Recently (Read 988826 times)