Improved method to equip LEGO train wheel holders with ball bearings (no cutting of the wheel holder required)

[Beej]

On 1/11/2020 at 4:41 AM, coaster said:

Even the cheap bearings from China are sufficient for our purposes.

Don't get me wrong, I love your work coaster, but I'd be cautious about making sweeping statements like that. I bought some bearings from eBay for this project, and after hours of work and tens of dollars spent, I ended up with bogies noticeably worse than the stock offering from Lego.

[Cale]

On 2/20/2020 at 5:13 PM, Beej said:

Don't get me wrong, I love your work coaster, but I'd be cautious about making sweeping statements like that. I bought some bearings from eBay for this project, and after hours of work and tens of dollars spent, I ended up with bogies noticeably worse than the stock offering from Lego.

I agree, I've been burned by cheap bearings from eBay before. However I think the $1.00 bearings are overkill for our application. Those are for racing and usually have extra features we don't necessarily need, like heavier shielding when run in a dirt environment. They are for racers looking to shave fractions of a second off their lap times. It does benefit us though to choose a bearing of at least moderate quality. There are several rating systems for bearings, one of them being the ABEC rating scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABEC_scale

I generally look to buy bearings between ABEC 5 and 7, and have had good luck with those.

Cale

[izx]

46 minutes ago, Cale said:

I agree, I've been burned by cheap bearings from eBay before. However I think the $1.00 bearings are overkill for our application. Those are for racing and usually have extra features we don't necessarily need, like heavier shielding when run in a dirt environment. They are for racers looking to shave fractions of a second off their lap times. It does benefit us though to choose a bearing of at least moderate quality. There are several rating systems for bearings, one of them being the ABEC rating scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABEC_scale

I generally look to buy bearings between ABEC 5 and 7, and have had good luck with those.

Well, the MR52ZZ bearings we get are supposed to be non-removable double-shielded by definition (the 'ZZ' part). For my next experiment, I got bearings from AliExpress advertised as ABEC-5 for approx. $0.33/bearing shipped. The cheapest MR52ZZ ABEC-5 bearings on eBay US at the time of this post appear to be $0.90/piece. 

[legoman666]

Ive had mixed results from eBay sellers. I switched to Aliexpress a while ago and have been able to get consistent product from the same seller over multiple years of orders. I do add a tiny dollop of sewing machine oil into each bearing though. Most of these come with no lubrication, so while it may seem to spin very freely, it'll only last until the metal on metal contact starts to wear.

[izx]

9 hours ago, legoman666 said:

I switched to Aliexpress a while ago and have been able to get consistent product from the same seller over multiple years of orders.

Can you share a link for this seller please?

9 hours ago, legoman666 said:

I do add a tiny dollop of sewing machine oil into each bearing though.

Thanks for that tip...I did wonder about lubrication.

[lego9vtrainfan]

I would also be interested in any links to reputable sellers (Aliexpress, eBay, etc.) of MR52ZZ bearings that people have found have worked well.  

Earlier I placed one order on Aliexpress and had results similar to @Beej above: the bearings had more friction that the standard LEGO train wheel setup, and some didn’t spin at all.  Granted they were not expensive, but I’d rather pay a little more to place an order with some confidence that the product will work than wait 1-2 months for the order to arrive and then have to try again.

Thanks in advance for sharing any resources you have to help everyone complete this mod successfully! 

[Pelzer117]

I know we shouldn't reply to old posts, but to finally answer the last post, just google: „Lego train bearing“.

You will find inbetween many Solutions:

Researches like this

ready mounted bricks from HA-Bricks or from bricktraindepot

or „How-To“ Videos like this one from Thomas.

I hope this will help others too.

[PopsicleLEGO]

The info on the net took me down the grub screw and ball bearing method and the upgrade of around 100 axles!

The parts came from AliExpress and did the job nicely. Probably had 10 reject parts, mostly the axles that were slightly oversized.

The difference in train running is enormous, especially compared to Lego's new plastic wheels. Whilst they are good for lightweight carriages, as soon as the weight goes up, the drag goes up and the runtime on the batteries goes way down.

I recommend the bearing upgrade with grub screws because you can dial-in precision!