Terrapin X Bearing

Last I heard the bearing was found exclusively on ebay. That’s the first thing that makes me think that it’s hype. The second is I’ve done a bit of research on bearings on the past (skating and skateboards) and there some, but very little difference between a steel and ceramic bearing. The is some difference and a few might even notice it. However there is a larger difference between a low quality bearing and a high quality one. I’m tempted to try one but I’m not made of money and I’d rather get a new throw than spend 25 on one bearing…at this point.

IMO, these are the best bearings ever.

Good lord people, relax. It’s called hyperbole. He wasn’t trying to insult anyone or say that people were wrong, he was just trying to tell people how awesome he thought the bearing was. Some of you guys get way too upset and defensive about the silliest things.

As for the Terrapins being hype, they’re really not just hype. Are they the end-all-be-all best bearing ever made with nothing coming close? No, they’re not. But, the Terrapin IS a really high quality bearing that performs amazingly well in every yoyo I’ve put it in. It comes in steel or steel/ceramic, it comes in different sizes, and it comes in the “X” version, which is similar to a KonKave/Center-Trac type of bearing. It’s not some crazy method of construction that makes it different, it’s the chemical treatment John uses on the bearings that greatly reduces friction, therefore increasing spin time and performance. He sells them himself because he does the work himself and it’s a small operation. You can buy them on eBay or directly through him either at contests/events or on YoYoNation (his user name is FJH123). I’m not sure if he’s on this forum or not. He also sells the Terrapin Bearing Juce that you can use to lube your own bearings, though you have to occasionally reapply it if you use the Juce, but not with the treated bearings. I own several of the treated bearings and they’re spectacular. I’ve also used the Juce to treat other bearings, and it’s a really nice bearing lube, though it doesn’t reduce the noise of your bearings by very much, compared to normal YYJ Thin Lube. John is also a super nice guy and very easy to deal with. I definitely think it’s worth investing in the ceramic X bearing for at least one of your favorite throws. Heck, you can always pick up a C bearing and switch it out between several different throws. Plus, it never has to be cleaned or lubed. I’ve had one in my Pyro for about 5 months now and I’ve only had to blow it out with canned air one time. It runs like a champ.

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I’ve been yoyoing for a loooong time. I’ve tried the terrapin and I’m not impressed. Yes it is a good bearing. No it’s not better than most other flat bearings. As far as ten ball bearings, They have more friction in them so they won’t spin as long in a controlled spin test. That being said I am fairly sure that the world spin time record yoyo has an 8 ball bearing in it. NOT a terrapin either. :slight_smile:

For those that are getting overly excited, just give your opinion. “I think spec bearings are better” would be a better response than…

for me I like kk bearings. never tried the terrapin. but im more waiting for the end of october because there is a company that is comming out with the homopolar electromagnetic bearing. google it. I found it under the bearing section in yoyowiki. ever tried to push two magnets together with both north poles or south poles. harder then hell isnt it. now imagine if you made a thin ring on the inside lip of the outer shell and thicker rings on the inner shell both opposing each other and then wrap it all up in stainless steel. Now you have a bearing that has sort of a cushion and floats litterally on air providing no friction and very very minimal slow down. put that in a yoyo. I dont think the yoyo record is going to last much longer after this month. cant wait. the company is not going to sell it just yet to regular people but only to companies that buy in bulk. but what if. and the company has not released how much the bearing is going to cost but promises it will be less then some of the high end bearings that cost $100 or more. I dont care. it sounds fun and interesting. here is the website www.magnetal.se. check it out.

I find fault in your logic here, Icthus. Just because a 10 ball bearing has more balls in it doesn’t mean it has more friction. as the surface area of the balls is reduced, so is the friction. 10 balls does not necessarily mean more friction than 8 balls. this is just conjecture, but it would seem to me that if a 10 ball bearing had more friction, there would be no point in producing it, so logic dictates that it would be at least equal to the 8 ball. as for the world spin time record, that’s kind of a moot point. terrapin’s weren’t around when the record was broken, and i’m not sure if it was ever tried with a 10 ball. world records don’t really mean much. technology advances every day, so unless the record was attempted almost constantly, using every bit of technology available, it really doesn’t prove anything. and i’ve compared the spin times of 8 balls, 10 balls and terrapins several times, under several different circumstances, and they’re all pretty close to equal. occasionally one or the other would come out on top, but that’s going to happen in real world applications. so i don’t think it can really be said with finality that the 10 ball doesn’t spin as long as the 8 ball. i think it’s all a matter of preference. to me, the main appeal to the Terrapins is the non-cleaning non-lubing aspect of them, and the fact that they perform consistently and with solid spin times.

wouldn’t it be hilarious if Jensen used strictly terrapin x bearings?

I like YYJ flat bearings…

Unless all you do is throw sleepers and wait for the yoyo to stop spinning, it really doesn’t make that big of a difference. If you are doing string tricks, isn’t the bigger villain the friction between the string and the yoyo itself? You could have a bearing that spins for days on it’s own, but once you starting maneuvering your yoyo around, and filling the gap with layers of string, it’s a whole different story. At least that’s what I think. As far as the quality of a bearing goes, spin time is important, but I think longevity of the bearings actual usable life is more important. That’s my opinion.

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Hhhhhrrrrrmmmmmm…opinions…something somthing load bearing tangent something something eigth grade physics something 10 ball …
TL;DR

I have the ceramic one in my Bassline.
It’s long spinning, smooth, maintenence free, and plays pretty much like a flat bearing except that the string stays centered.
they say that they don’t need to be broken in, but actually do need about a week of abuse before they really start to shine.
I am very impressed with mine and would recommend it.

In a perfect set up, a sphere touches a plane at one point. Even though the races are curved it should still only contact at one point, therefore, ten points= more friction than eight points. I think that all the bearings nowadays will offer enough spin time to get you through your tricks, so it doesn’t make a huge difference what you use. So what if you can get twenty more seconds of spin with brand x bearing over brand y? What matters to me is the upkeep, durability, centering (if it has them) abilities, smoothness and sound.

I enjoy Terrapin Xs Bearings. But in all truthfulness, its opinionated.

There is no perfect set up though. The smaller the ball, the less contact. So it depends on the radius of the balls AND the number of balls. I doubt any of us know their radii, and there are probably many other factors not mentioned. It’s a lot more complicated than any of us have stated. :slight_smile:

I agree: “all the bearings nowadays will offer enough spin time to get you through your tricks, so it doesn’t make a huge difference what you use”

Look, I went through geometry. A sphere will only touch a plane at one point no matter what the size of the sphere. A bearing race will only touch the ball at one point no matter what size the ball is. Now, the balls can also touch the cage so I would also assume that a ten ball has more friction by touching the cage than an eight ball bearing. Under the exact same conditions, a ten ball will spin less than an eight ball. As I said though, this is negligible in the grand scheme of things.

Then if you paid attention in geometry, you would know that this is only the case with a perfect sphere touching a perfectly flat plane. Since the interior of a bearing is not a flat plane, It does not touch at only one point. Therefore, you can’t use this argument to prove that a 10 ball will spin less than an 8 ball.

But, this is all going off on a tangent. The terrapin bearings are great, at least in my opinion.

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So to speak. If you think of the two circles of the ball and the outer or inner race then you can see that they are tangent circles. Tangent circles only share one point, sooooo, a bearing ball will intersect the race at one point. So a ten ball will have more points of contact in that respect.
Whew, I just love math…

Kyle Weems has done a controlled test on several different bearings. The ten ball didn’t spin as long as the others. All of them cleaned too. Seems ten ball bearings were made for precision not for spin time. The tighter the specs on a bearing the less it will spin. The looser the longer. That’s just how it is.

Wow, I never even realized my own play on words until you pointed it out. I must be half asleep today. I can appreciate your love of math. I love it as well. It’s nice to have some intelligent debate on here :slight_smile:

You are absolutely correct, if we assume that all the circles involved are perfect circles. But, due to imperfections in production and deformity due to heat and wear, they won’t be perfect. I’m assuming that the races and balls are all slightly flawed, so you’re not really getting perfect tangent points from any of them. But, you’re right really. Perfect tangent or no, you’re going to get negligible friction difference between any of these. So, a perfectly made 10 ball would have more friction than a perfectly made 8 ball, but not enough to amount to anything remotely noticeable. In the real world, with real world flaws, I still think they are pretty much even. I stand corrected on my earlier statement about surface area/etc. I wasn’t thinking straight geometry. I’d say in general the 10 ball would have more load bearing capability and allow less deformity of the braces, therefore reducing friction by a miniscule amount and giving it a longer life span. But an 8 ball ceramic would also be great because it allows less heat friction and less chance of deformity of the ball bearings themselves, therefore reducing friction across the board, again by a miniscule amount. And i think that’s the most I’ve ever used the word “deformity” in one sitting.

Right, if they were perfect, the 8 ball would touch with 8 atoms and the 10 ball would touch with 10 atoms. Hardly a difference. :slight_smile:

Assuming the balls are not made perfectly (like yoyos are not), think about this example: would you expect Lucky’s 6-foot-tall yoyo or a Mighty Flea to have more contact area with a surface?

What I’m saying is that we don’t know the radii of the balls, and so we don’t know the friction trade-off between size and ball count. It may be that the 10 ball has more friction that the 8 ball, but it’s not necessarily due to the ball count alone.

I have something to add on this that’s maybe not so much opinion based and I thought my findings on this one were very interesting. Hopefully you guys will think so too.

I’ve recently had the privilege of gaining ownership of two 2007 888s within the past couple weeks, but each of them were plagued with an annoying vibe - one of those vibes you could see and feel on every throw, thumbnail test confirmed. I tried every possible thing I could on these things, tuning axles for a half hour at a time searching for a sweet spot to no avail.

I noticed the bearing on my ‘Mud’ 07 was getting a bit gunked up, so to hold me over until I could get ahold of some mineral spirits for cleaning, I decided to swap out the standard flat bearing for the Terrapin chrome bearing I had laying around. Much to my absolute surprise, my vibey Mud was now dead smooth even without tuning the axle. Thinking it could have just been a fortunate fluke, I proceeded to play and enjoy my now-smooth 888.

Fast forward a little bit to yesterday. I just got an aqua '07 888 and was terribly disappointed to find an even bigger vibe than the Mud had. I could feel it at the end of the string on each throw and every grind I tried was super annoying. So I went through the motions again. Swapped out the axle, tuned it like crazy and put every single smooth bearing I owned in that thing. Nothing worked - I thought for sure there was nothing that could make it play smooth and I was starting to get really mad at the person I bought it from.

Then I put in the Terrapin. Once again, dead smooth. And I don’t mean just a little bit smooth either. I’m talking dead. smooth. On the string and on grinds (grinds are the real test for me), no vibe whatsoever.

I know that my story is bound to conjure up plenty to skepticism (and perhaps even a few outraged naysayers) because had I not experienced it myself, I wouldn’t believe it for a second. All I can say is for this reason alone, I’m completely astounded and am now officially a Terrapin fan.

Took the words right out of my mouth.