Oh, I wish you hadn't asked that question!


The short answer is that tapered roller bearings are designed to take more thrust than ball bearings. Green bearings are ball bearings. So, theoretically, the tapered roller bearings will last longer or not fail as rapidly as the Green bearings.
The issue is complicated by the fact that most new cars use ball bearings for their wheel bearings.

Also, I haven't done the calculations on factor of safety, but I'm guessing the ball bearings reduce the bearing's strength factor of safety from, say, 2.75 to 1.5. Yes that's a reduction, but it still provides a bearing with 1.5 times as much strength as needed. I've had this discussion with fellow mechanical engineers for years, about the value of larger factors of safety. None of us can decide one way or the other, there's a lot of "it depends" built into the answer.

So the issue has become very much like a religious discussion. Both pro- and con- Green bearing partisans maintain that theirs is the only true religion. And similar to religious controversies, people don't change sides very often.

R.