What`s the issue with green bearings - are these ball bearings as opposed to conical roller bearings?

Are roller anxle bearings no longer available? Seems to me that appropriate conical rollers would still be available from bearing supply places.

The original set 7 rear wheel bearings are alive and well. Use them whenever possible. Mopar provided us with the beast bearing as original equipment.

Folks think the green bearings are better because hey need no adjusting when intstalling axle shafts. As in no thinking required. It does make the math on narrowing a rear end easier.

Let the begin

i think if you are spinning your tires or cornering fast you will never see the benefit of tapered bearings---you cant get enough traction----if it did make a difference there would be ford and chevy axles litering the streets---now if you dropped your car off a cliff that bearing would get its full use but everything else will be bent-----and why did chrysler ditch them?

Eliminated because they are Expensive and take more time on the assembly line. Just like factories going to 4 lug wheels, you doing that also?

If you keep the tapered rear bearings cleaned and packed, have you ever had one fail?

It is not absolutely necessary, but if you want a cheap junk bearing, buy a 60's GM car with the axle as the bearing race.

I used the green bearings when I built the Dana 60 for the '64 Polara, but I won't use them again if I have a choice.

The Ramcharger has a Dana 60 that I built with large Ford ends and the large Ford sealed bearings. I don't have to play with axle bearing pre-load adjustment or worry that I have not packed enough grease in the wheel bearings. That is old school.

Green bearing are for lazy mechanics. Now if you want US made tapered roller bearing you have to go to a industrial supply house.

Never had a Green Bearing failure or issue in 3 decades of use in Dana 60's or 8 3/4 rears on the street or track/road course, I have had several failures of factory tapered bearings in the last 40 years however...go "green" IMHO

On the other hand GM's half- a-- penny piching design has resulted in a money making opportunity for the axle Mfr's

My experiences are quite the opposite in that I have seen several green bearing failures anywhere from 10K- 50K miles but know of several factory cars that have exceeded 250K with no rear end service of any kind. I would question how many of the "green bearing" conversion vehicles have seen that kind of service.

Been using Green bearings for many years without a single issue....same goes for factory tapered bearings. What's bad for axle bearings are rear wheels with excessive offset. Seen quite a few with so much offset they were literally riding on the inside half of the tire.

I have green bearings installed on my dana 60. I have to admit, they made me nervous when I saw that there really isn't much keeping them in place, specifically on fast hard turns. But I've never heard of them failing or sliding out of place so if they work/last just as good as properly set tapered bearings I see no reason not to use them

It depends on what green bearings you buy. I replaced an old set in my Dana where the plate was made on the bearing and were bent. I replaced them with a bearing with a separate plate that Dr. Diff recommends and sells what a difference in quality and strength. Trust Cass you get what you pay for.

in my opinion the only way to properly clean and pack the tapered bearings is to cut them off and put on new ones----yeah i know there are guys that say they can pack them by sqeasing grease in around the corner and turning them----but you sure dont do your front hubs that way do you?-----maybe there is a way to put a grease zerk on the hub and do them like a trailer axle--then you would be in danger of taking out the seal with too much grease------not much in favor with the make do idea.....

I the first set of "green" bearings I bought from Summers Bros. back in the mid 1970s failed and allowed the axle to slide out of the rear end housing on street car due to the inner retainer sliding out of place The customer was on his way to northern CA from So Ca and had to have it fixed on the road, NOT GOOD Same thing on a drag car at the races, retainer didn't hold the bearing in place and the axle slid out making the tires rub on the rear 1/4 panels
Maybe Murphy loved messing with me back then,
No other failures since then
The tapered Timken Roller bearings are a lot sronger for road use as well as being a lot more money when replacing them
I use to work in service stations as a kid and I have replaced a lot more ball bearings and races on the front hubs of the older GM cars than on either Ford or Mopars with tapered ball bearings back then
The ball bearings will not take any side preload at all, if you run them to loose or to tight on the preload they will fail
Not so on the Timken tapered roller bearings

Stanton--what are the "EE"s with the funky solo umlauts doing in the title of your post???

i didn't think anyone knew what umlauts were any more ! are you old [like me] and did you [kinda] pay attention in english class ?

Keys are small ... thumbs are big. Hitting two keys at once changes some of the characters on an bilingual keyboard. Didn't notice till the next day.

I first thought that was Canadien for EHH EHH

A+ in engish and never took an auto mechanics class. LOL!!

Some claim tapered are the only way to go....I've used the green bearings for years...beat the cars up...never had a problem....with the rearend

Agreed, same here, decades of use and abuse running Green Bearings, zero issues or failures on any of my vehicles or customers, most people are just "lipping" hersay/myths they have heard, from my experience with others that may have had issues or failures, it seems to stem from installation errors on their behalf

On a Roundy round car, green bearings wont finish one race, that should tell you something .

We're not driving roundy round cars

LMAO

Maybe not roundy round cars but crisp mountain canyon driving.
Train cars use tapers for high flange loads, no green bearings.
Craig

I've been slinging cars around tracks for decades on Green Bearings, "roundy round/stock car", road course, 1/4 mile, parking lot gymkhana, street racing, etc, etc...never an issue on Greens, although I have toasted a few factory tapered bearings

you must not go very fast or hard into a corner

I would bet that the spiral clip that some greens have would bail out before the ball bearing would wear out on nasty side loads. That being said I DID cash a pair of greens in a thousand miles due to my own hackery, by leaving the adjuster block in place with a new pair of mosers that were designed for adjuster block absent center section..

I have owned dozens of mopars, always service the wheel bearings, never have a tapered roller bearing fail. NO REASON to ever buy a poor designed green bearing.

For those that do not know that the Green type axle bearings, all of them, are ball bearings, nothing more, nothing less
They work, but there not the best for long hard aggressive street or track racing
Think about the contact surfaces on a ball bearing and race and then the same on a tapered Timken roller bearing, how many ball bearings, the O.D. of the balls in each green bearing and how many tapered roller bearings and how much supporting surface contact there is on them

More specific, I believe the Green bearings are double row ball bearings. Years ago I looked up the design specifications for both the stock and the greens. IIRC, the tapered roller bearings had something like 4x the side load capacity of the green bearings. But, the green bearing side loading was pretty high. Again, something like a 4g skid pad type of turn would have to be needed to get to the design load of the green bearing. I know my Road Runner isn't capable of 4g turns on a skid pad. But constant side loading could shorten the life of the bearing. This is going back a ways when I looked this up, maybe like 20 years ago.

Some rear disc brake kits aren't compatible with the stock bearings. Sometimes you HAVE to use green bearings.

Been using green bearings on the street and strip for the last 15+ years. No issues.

Finally we are getting some factual data instead of opinions.
Both bearing designs will function if used within their design parameters. Due to the design differences their life expectancy will be compromised when they are used in less than ideal conditions. Ball bearings preceded the Timken design by several decades. The Timken design was developed to overcome the shortcomings of the ball bearing in demanding applications.

Pretty simple really

If all this stuff about side loading was really that important to street and race cars, all of us would be using full-floating truck rear ends in our cars like they use in NASCAR....

they are not double row bearings

I have been running a set of Green Bearings in my 70 dart for 15+ years now. No issues.

I've been hearing these arguments for and against greens for 40 years and still no concensus.

Who cares - run whatever you want. There is no sense in beating it to death.

Yup, seems that way.

Exactly the point I was making. In all these years and all these green bearing bash threads there really has not been a compelling reason to not use either one. If the greens where so bad then all the rear end companies would have stopped selling them decades ago. So, like the previous poster said, give it a rest and use what you want.

Dr Diff uses Greens on his Axles that he sells... Just bought a set....Seems the Doc knows a little about Axles Bearings so they can't be that bad.. the Doc also was saying on his web site that their are TWO types of Green bearing designs...

The 7 1/4"s came with what looked like a smaller version which many have ran over 100,000 miles

The number of vehicles (OEM production)on today's roads that run a "Green Bearings" configuration number in the millions, green bearings have been as hard to accept for the Mopar crowd over the decades, just as hard as accepting disc brakes, never mind 4 wheel disc brakes!, OD transmissions, mini starters, one wire alternators, rebodies, roller cams, non numbers matching drivelines, color changes, or a clean change of underwear!

If not, that only adds to reasoning not to use them. it should not take a "somewhat" mechanically skilled individual to look at the two "designs" and KNOW which one is the better choice for a particular application. NUFF SAID

Valid point, however one must consider the size of the bearings, the weight of the vehicles, their usage etc. IE: An equally sized Timken will easily surpass the longevity of a Ball bearing. That is not to say that a LARGER ball bearing cannot equal the longevity of a Timken.
But a Ball Bearing cannot equal the service life when sized the same and subjected to the loads they were not designed to be subjected to, PERIOD!!! Just because the ID and OD match does not mean they were designed for the same use nor will they perform the same.

nuff said

GREEN is a company, not just a description, right?
I had to replace the "Green" bearings in my Charger twice in 11,000 miles of spirited street driving. No, not running 70 series bias ply tires or stock suspension....I'm talking higher load stuff like 275-40 18s, 295-45-18s, bigger T bars, sway bars, frame connectors, etc.
I have never seen a tapered bearing fail personally. I intend to switch back to OEM style soon.