Enduro Bearings have announced the conclusion of an 18-month long ‘Bottom Bracket Bearing Fatigue and Efficiency Test’ report. The report includes test protocols and results for Enduro’s own XD15, Maxhit and ABEC 3 bottom bracket bearings against 6 other leading brands.

In sharing the report and its findings the brand points out that just as bike companies do hours of testing in the lab and wind tunnel to prove their own technology, Enduro Bearings, and their ‘Max Tester’ cycling specific bearing test machine have been doing the same for years.

The brand feels now is the time to share this information, with the aim of educating consumers and the trade on the how’s and why’s of bearing performance and durability.

This report looks at bearing wear and tear due to the multi-directional loads endured during cycling, which is just one cause of bearing degradation and failure. We’ve all experienced and listened to rough, noisy bearings while riding and this report highlights why Enduro Bearings are confident to offer a lifetime warranty on both the XD15 and Maxhit.

Key points & conclusions

Ball size matters. Bearing assemblies with fewer, larger bearing balls are more efficient and have much greater fatigue resistance.

Material choice matters. Bearing designs that harmonize materials last much longer.

Only the bearing designs that combine the attributes of conclusions #1 and #2 completed 3,000,000 cycles as good as or better than new. All other models started losing efficiency no later than 360,000 cycles (some way before that).

Only Enduro Bearings XD15 and Maxhit™ achieve these results