Re: Micro bearings - was - My new K2 Mod Lts

> Pat" wrote ...
> I am a little nervous about the micro bearings...

I forgot to add, my opinion is that the jury is still out on 688 bearings.
They are generally more expensive.  Racers think that they help, but it they
THINK they help then it improves their attitude and may affect their time
even if the bearings are not better.

I am very impressed with the TwinCam 688s that came in my Salomon Vitesse
III skates with Salomon OEM wheels.

They felt quite sluggish the first 20-40 miles that I skated and I bought
other wheels for racing and figured that I would use the 688 wheels and
bearings for daily use until they wore out.  My experience has been that the
better Labeda wheels roll better than OEM wheels that I have had in the
past.

Since wheels/bearings just don't wear out where I skate in the winter, I
left the "race" setup in my skates for the next month.

I still had my "race" setup on the skates when I went to Florida last March
for the Disney Inline Marathon when I ran into water on the Friday Night
Skate down there, which left me with the Salomon/TwinCam set to use for the
race.

I was very surprised at how fast they were.  They instantly became my race
set and were used for the other races that I went to this year.  I went back
to my old everyday wheels/bearings.

Some people say that they are hard to clean and grease.  I have cleaned one
set and found that it is no harder to clean them than 608s and they were
essentially perfect afterwards.
That set was a "throw away" from another person.  They are BSB branded, made
in China, with blue shields.
They were just being squeaky, no water damage.

I don't know about life span of the 688s.  Racers really don't care.
Most of my bearings die from run ins with water which doesn't care what the
bearing style is.

Just my overly windy way of saying - don't give up on the 688s too soon, you
may find that you like them.





--
Bill Fuhrmann
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