Looking for some experience from the group here… I generally have Ceramic Speed bearings or similar on my wheels, and whatever bearings are appropriate elsewhere (bottom brackets are either CS or Campy Cult; headset would be Specialized, etc.). Overall I don’t think I get great life… wheel bearings tend to last me about 6000-8000km. Headset bearings likewise. BB bearing seem to do a lot better, for whatever reason.
So… that seems poor to me but is that a realistic expectation? I almost never ride in the rain, never in mud, and I am pretty diligent about cleaning my bikes (which may be causing accelerated wear?). If bearings should last a lot longer, any thoughts on what type and frequency of maintenance should be done?
How often are you doing maintenance? My ceramicspeed bottom bracket is over 20k miles and showing no signs of issues with regular maintenance every 2-3k miles. I haven’t thrashed them in mud but I certainly have ridden them in some impressive rain storms.
The wheels on some bikes have the ceramicspeed bearings and I had a mechanic inspect and repack them after a few years. Everything spins great.
I use normal steel Enduro (or similar) bearings. And longevity isn’t that predictable. I’ve had wheel bearings go out in less than 3000km, and some last for 10’s of thousands.
Honestly, I treat cartridge bearings mostly as disposable wear items - not a ton of maintenance. Around every 6-8 weeks or so, I’ll do a more in-depth inspection where I get to the point where I wipe the external seals of accumulated grime and do a light coating of grease where appropriate. On some of my bikes, this has been important for the headset bearings, as I’m a sweater, and the salt can get down there. Definitely use a towel if doing indoor trainer work.
I’ve never messed with pulling cartridge seals with a pick and cleaning and re-greasing except in rare cases. Normally the second I get a gravel feel, the bearing gets swapped out.
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To answer the question: how often are you doing maintenance? Never. 
Part of the thread here is to hopefully get a good answer to how often I should do maintenance. I recently had a bike that had upper and and lower headset, and both wheel bearings need replacing. About 7000km or 8000km total. As I said, no riding in the rain, no mud, all pavement. They all felt like crap. I had CS bearings on front and rear hubs, and whatever the standard is for an S-Works frame in the headset. BB was totally fine (Campy). But if CS bearings aren’t lasting any longer than a cassette, then I am surprised. Maybe that is just me, but I would have guessed more in the 20,000 km+ of life expectancy.
I wrench on lot of premium stuff and when durability is in question we usually don’t opt for ceramic bearings. My only excepion would be CS coated bottom brackets which don’t suffer from pitting and corrosion of races that much but we maintain the bearing more often as the service is not that expensive in comparison to the price of the bearings.
CS bearings have low contact seals which let in much more debris inside compared to the higher drag full contact seals. The seal ability to actually seal is a very high contributor in durability as well as amount and type of grease.
I have mixed results with CS SLT headset bearings. Enduro stainless is a bombproof headset option, I have couple customers who race cyclocross, their bikes see a lot of pressure washing and dirt and I haven’t seen a failed stainless enduro so far. Ceramic headset bearings are waste of money.
Big contributor of bearing durability is the quality of the shells - be it BBs or hubs. When a BB is not precise, the hub shells are tight or too big, the spacing is off, no type of bearing will salvage you.
Bad washing technique and use of degreasers play a big role too. Customers who ride a lot and keep their bike pristine from outside vis frequent washing tend to have worse bearing durability.
I wouldn’t say 6-8k kms is poor durability for ceramic bearings with a low contact seals on a bike which has a wash down once a week and no beating maintenance.
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What coated Ceramicspeed Bearings look like after an estimated 2 - 3,000kms of neglect, in tropical rain, and whatever the tyres kick up. Completely dry of grease and prior to cleaning, with liberal dousing of isopropyl alcohol and scrubbing with a toothbrush. Don’t neglect your bearings.
We do regular checks on client bikes and strip, clean and repack bearings every 2,000kms or so, often less, and rarely have issues with worn bearings for way more than that 8,000km figure. Any issues we encounter are usually from neglect (from new clients), crushed headset bearings, etc.
Bottom line is to get on top of your bearing servicing routine, and you should be fine. Do note that some bottom brackets, like Shimano’s BBR60, weren’t meant to be serviceable, and are largely a consumable item.
@Not_Fast_Enough_To_Keep_Up Thanks for the reply. Two things: 1) Love the nickname. 2) Any chance you could do a brief description of your clean and repack process?
@socloseyet_sofaraway, re: nicknames, likewise!
As a serviced-based business, we usually assess the riding behaviour of new clients (and whether their bikes have been routinely serviced). That gives us a pretty good gauge of the condition of wear items like bearings. We also look at the condition of the frame and fork (underside of the crown, for instance) as a barometer for the health of the bike. These allow us to form a mental image of the condition of the wear items.
In (more) extreme cases, like the BB above, we;
- Used a dull pick to (first) remove the bulk of the debris that had made its way into the bearing itself, around the races, seats, etc.
- Doused the bearing with Isopropyl Alcohol using a spray gun and scrubbed gently with a toothbrush, followed by a wipedown. For the BB above, we had to repeat this step a few times to get it to a fairly clean state. The BB still ran a little rough though, presumably due to the higher levels of wear.
- Repack with grease. I personally tend to lay a ring of grease (CeramicSpeed’s All Round Grease, for this BB), right over the bearings itself, and somewhere between the inner and outer races. I also tend to pack a little more than needed to ensure that there is sufficient grease to fully coat the bearings, and internal faces of the races, after the seals are laid, but not too much that it “floods” the bearings.
NB: the image in my earlier message above shows the “before” shot of the BB before cleaning. Attaching the “after” shot here, with some bits of paper towel that hadn’t been removed. 
