Counterfeit bearings

[Kestas]

Our company is on a mission to educate engineers (especially field engineers that interface on-site with clients) on identification of counterfeit bearings.

It seems that some people around the world take cheap bearings, grind off the markings on the side of the bearings, remark them with a premium brand, and sell them at a premium price. Other times they're repackaged in boxes that are knock-offs of the original. Amusingly, sometimes there are misspellings on the boxes! Our company has anti-counterfeit markings on our product.

I've been involved in a couple cases where we've identified counterfeit bearings and are bringing the suppliers to suit.

The best way to avoid counterfeit bearings is to buy from an approved distributor.

 

[Pablo]

Something like this occurred to the company I was working for in 1993! I'm not picking on China but some Chinese like bearings (they matched EXACTLY bearings that were marked "China") were labeled as NHB's.......we had to go out in the field to replace ball bearings (I distinctly remember a trip to Boston)

The problem? The balls looked like the surface of the moon.

 

[Steve S]

Counterfeit Parts seem to be a problem .The company I worked for would only buy Factory parts . Big pockets if there is a problem. Pablo ,a lower grade made in China product!!!

 

[flacoman]

Big problem for electronics too! Transistors , IC's you name it.
Hard to find originals half the time.

 

[hi-miler]

People like to compare China to post WWII Japan. Maybe I was too young, but I don't remember anyone telling me or writing articles that the Japanese were trying to invade our markets with substandard knockoffs.
Steve

 

[Samilcar]

Is this why both front wheel bearings on my 2003 Oldsmobile Alero went bad at 40,000 miles?

Hmmm...

 

[Steve S]

Originally Posted By: Samilcar
Is this why both front wheel bearings on my 2003 Oldsmobile Alero went bad at 40,000 miles?

Hmmm...
No it is just General Motors fine quality.

 

[Torino]

WAAAAYYY back when there were PLENTY of Japanese knockoffs. John--Las Vegas.

 

[Kestas]

Originally Posted By: Samilcar
Is this why both front wheel bearings on my 2003 Oldsmobile Alero went bad at 40,000 miles?

Hmmm...

Probably only one went bad. Chances are that your mechanic replaced a good bearing. For some reason mechanics think they have to replace both bearings as an axle set - not so.

 

[Samilcar]

Originally Posted By: Kestas
Originally Posted By: Samilcar
Is this why both front wheel bearings on my 2003 Oldsmobile Alero went bad at 40,000 miles?

Hmmm...

Probably only one went bad. Chances are that your mechanic replaced a good bearing. For some reason mechanics think they have to replace both bearings as an axle set - not so.


I strongly suspected something like that might have happened. After the first bearing was replaced, my wife drove the car for a month and didn't report anything amiss. As soon as I was able to drive it, I immediately noticed the same grinding roar at highway speeds that we had before. We took it in to have the other bearing replaced and now everything is nice and quiet. They might have replaced the wrong (good) bearing on the first go around. Oh well.

 

[Kestas]

I handle the OEM automotive wheel bearing warranty issues for our company. We often see this.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: hi-miler
I don't remember anyone telling me or writing articles that the Japanese were trying to invade our markets with substandard knockoffs.
Steve


I think that was absolutely the case. I recall hearing that many viewed Japanese stuff as throwaway junk for a long time before they started to associate their products with precision pieces.

Probably akin to hyundai. At first they were junky, throwaway cars, then they became "high value" vehicles with everything but the kitchen sink as a standard feature in a $10k economy car. Now theyre starting to become reliable enough and decent enough to be considered...

 

[kc8adu]

i remember rebuilding a spindle drive for a devlieg jigmill.
while i had the unit out the operator replaced a bunch of bearings in this machine.
i reinstalled the drive and powered it up.
changed a few settings in the setup and did a basic run test manually.
heard a tink tink tink sound at low speeds and about the time i looked for the source it went away.then the drive threw a al code for overload.unable to find a reason for this i reset it and had the operater run it.he ran it to full speed after testing at low and seeing no problem.
when the readout on the drive hit about 5000 rpm there was a deafening screech bang and an al code for overload.
turns out the bearings had exploded!
they were later determined to be counterfiets.
these bearing sets are expensive so it is easy to make a quick buck selling fakes that are 10% of the cost of the proper parts.
i run into this with electronic parts often.
the funniest was an ic where the original is a 24 pin dip but the replacement was a 28 pin.
or a remark where the crooks failed to fully sand off the original numbers fully.of course the part they remarked would never last in this application.and most of the brokers that come up in google searches sell fake/remarked parts.
my favorite was toshiba transistors with the proper logo and font but spelled toshbia!

 

[Quest]

Originally Posted By: kc8adu

or a remark where the crooks failed to fully sand off the original numbers fully.of course the part they remarked would never last in this application.and most of the brokers that come up in google searches sell fake/remarked parts.
my favorite was toshiba transistors with the proper logo and font but spelled toshbia!


My favourites have always been counterfeit TO-3 2N3055 knockoffs, and fake multi-section high voltage/high capacitance lytic caps that are essentially a couple of smaller ones soldered together and concealed into 1 big one.

Japanese were more like "copycats" back then than being arrogant counterfeiters. They were struggling in getting their machining tolerances tight/production consistencies and QA controls back then and now as their skills become more mature and consistent, they now ranks amongst the best of the industrialised countries globalwide.

Funny that every single country has to go through this inevitable stage, but whether they are able to wise up enough to quickly shift from making counterfeited good to legitimate ones or just plain ole staying on making a quick buck w/o a vision of long-term reputation and progress is beyond me.

Let's just hope that India, China, etc. get better over time.

Q.

 

[hi-miler]

Originally Posted By: Quest
Japanese were more like "copycats" back then than being arrogant counterfeiters.

That's my point. There are some exceptions, but for the most part Japan labeled their stuff as being exactly what it was. In todays world, what's not a moving target?
Steve

 

[Quest]

Originally Posted By: hi-miler
Originally Posted By: Quest
Japanese were more like "copycats" back then than being arrogant counterfeiters.

That's my point. There are some exceptions, but for the most part Japan labeled their stuff as being exactly what it was. In todays world, what's not a moving target?
Steve


The way I see it is that counterfeiters are those that makes inferior replicas that does not meet/live up to expectations; copycats are the one that sometimes may infringe on copyrights but for the most part: what they try to copy are just as good, and sometimes maybe better (improvements made to them) than the originals.

Nope, counterfeiters carry a much more negative/inferior meaning in my dictionary.

Q.

 

[Shannow]

Korea is interesting in the heavy industry side.

They just go about grabbing every idea that they can from anybody who does business there and produce it themselves.

I've seen three patent violations on one job, each of which would have made the other two superfluous.

 

[Papa Bear]

Kestas said "I handle the OEM automotive wheel bearing warranty issues for our company. We often see this."

I was a pipefitter at Chrysler Canada plant3 in the '60's and one of the jobs we did was changing the empty 45 gal drums of grease at the hub greaser machine among others. Pretty well always there was a handful of hubs that didn't get greased properly due to air bubbles in the system from changing the drums. It would be easy for a vehicle to end up with 2 poorly greased hubs at that time.

 

[JetStar]

When companies put extreme pressure on vendors to cut costs, and give to the lowest bidder, things like this can happen. Not much due dilligence to ensure the parts are genuine, kinda like when they hire illegals with fake ID's, then act surprised when INS kicks the door down.
It really gets complicated when there is a parts shortage due to obsolecence, or supply issues and they have to deal with brokers. Thats when it seems to go to [censored].
The FBI/FAA/Gov't is watching this closely due to cases where the bogus parts endanger lives.

 

[punisher]

One of the more public counterfeit outings happened almost a decade ago when McLaren/Mercedes F1 had a spate of transaxle failures. It was tracked down to a counterfeit trans bearing that made its way into their supply chain.