XJet

Now I may be wrong (I've only been working with model engines for 45 years and I know I don't know everything) but I believe you'll find that RC-Bearings "standard steel bearings" have races/balls that are made from bearing-steel. Note that regular bearing-steel actually has 1.3-1.6% chrome in it. Your claim "no chrome" is incorrect and based on ignorance.

Do not confuse bearing (chrome) steel with stainless. Stainless bearings have ten times more chrome and are somewhat more resistant to corrosion but wear more quickly because stainless is *softer* than bearing-steel.

When I replace bearings in my engines, I actually prefer to go for ("plain") bearing-steel versions because, so long as you're using an oil package that contains a little castor to protect against rust, they actually last noticeably longer than stainless ones and represent a better value-point.

If you don't use a particularly good oil package (from a corrosion perspective) or don't bother with ARO and use your engines relatively infrequently then stainless may be a better option but for the vast majority of folks, bearing steel is by far and away the best value.

ROTFL. Do you realize that your "econo bearings" are plain chrome bearing steel *NOT* stainless??? Do you realize that you're paying almost twice as much for bearings that are actually inferior (for model-engine use) to those you get from RC-bearings for just $5.95? In fact, they're inferior to the RC-Bearings units because they have metal retainers that can (and on occasion actually do) fail catastrophically causing fatal engine damage. Those "cheap" $5.95 bearings you scoff at from RC-bearings have the same Polymite Plastic retainers as Bocca's "High Speed/High Heat Series" which actually cost around $35 a set!!!

There is no such thing as "plain steel" bearings, they all have some chrome in them and you've been duped by Bocca's spin. The bearing steel in the econoline is exactly the same low-chrome type as in the bearings from RC-Bearings. If you buy the *equivalent* to one of RC-Bearings standard bearing-steel sets ($5.95) you will pay $34.95 from Bocca).

Boy, have you ever been ripped!

In fact, if you paid just an extra $3 a set at RC-bearings, you could get *real* stainless sets that *would* be more resistant to corrosion that the units you're currently buying from Bocca and you'd still be saving $2.

Clearly you've never even *tried* the bearings that RC-Bearings sell and you are spreading misinformation based on your own ignorance here FBD.

Hey, if you want to pay twice as much money for bearings with the same low-chrome metalurgy and an inferior metal retainer then that's your right but please don't try to tell other people that they should do the same just because you don't understand the difference between chrome/bearing-steel and stainless steel and clearly don't appreciate the value of using polymer retainers in bearings used for model-engine applications.

Actually, I think you should be feeling a little embarrassed right now, you've just proven that you've made some rather foolish assumptions and you have been well and truly paying through the nose for very "average" bearings.

To summarize:

Bearing-steel sets with inferior metal retainers from Bocca are (on average) around $12 a set.

Bocca's bearing-steel units with polymer retainers are (on average) about $35 a set.

The same metalurgy and polymer retainers from RC-Bearings cost around $6 per set.

Stainless bearings from RC-bearings cost about $3 extra (making them around $9 per set).

This means you can get a vastly *superior* bearing set (stainless with polymer retainer) from RC-Bearings for little more than a quarter the price of the Bocca equivalent. Gosh, Mike's figure of "three times more expensive" may have actually been somewhat conservative.

I trust you'll be tendering an apology to Mike.