Many FL washing machine bearings are larger than an early 19
Here the FL machine bought in in 1976 became noisy about 1997 with twenty one years of usage. It ran until the front bearings cage broke in the summer of 2005. I rebuilt the machine in 2006. Its front 6205 bearing's cage broke. The balls are are not even round in that bearing. The water seal failed. The old rear 6205 bearing with 29 years of usage technically is worn out since it has more than 10 percent of its races with pits, but still works OK. These are a 25mm bore bearing.
Today some FL washers use 30 and 35mm bore ball bearings. When today somebodys FL washer that is 3 years old has a bearing go bad, it has to be seal. The bearing is larger in load capacity than of a 1965 Mustangs rear axle bearing.
There is a reason fisherman use bearing buddies; to lube the bearings. In trailers if one has them go under water to load a boat, the bearings often get wet and corrode like made. The same bearing if it never sees water can last a livetime. A dunked bearing can have one on the side of the road with a hot or ruined bearing and ruin ones fishing trip.
Here I have a 3 foot stack of bearing info catalogs, the classical Harris engineering textbook on load calculations and even the ultra ultra rare New Departure Hyatt hand written text book that was written in WW2 that is worth a bundle. I use to work in ball bearing spindle design with NMB, SKF, NDH, Kyocera, Fag, Koyo, etc on disc drives. I have a spectrum analyzer to measure the noise spectrum of bearings; and a whole collection of bearings. One gets different frequencies with inner. outer, ball and cage defects. I once turned down a job offer to work for NSK in Ann Arbor about 20 years ago. In Ceramic ball bearings. Kyocera had them 20 years ago in Japan
Most ball bearings are 52100 steel that corrodes with ease. The reason I mention the seal being the weak link is that ball bearing is only protected by that water seal.
The washer here that had one bearing fail totally after 29 years is bot even a sealed bearing; it is a shielded one.
If one looks at most modern non Miele FL washers; the spider is a light aluminum. It is a shot casting with gobs of surface area; ideal to corrode quickly. The web is full of early failures with these spiders corrodeing. That broken corroded shush/slurly of aluminum crud cannot be good for the water seals lip.
If one runs a few numbers for load, the failures of FL washers today is *WAY* shorter than a bearing prediction; ie in another universe. The ball bearings today in many FL washers is equal or larger than many of the ball bearings once used in a small car's rear axle back in the 1960's. The "small type" factory real axle ball bearings in a Ford Falcon or early Mustang are smaller than those larger ball bearings in a modern FL washer.
Today a car like the Camaro, a postal delivery truck have roller bearings on the rear axles.
It is good to disagree.
Besides a bad install; Here I have seen ball bearing failures due to arcing, missalignment, too high a preload, wrong clearance too. Even one hands can ruin the bearing surfaces. Mixing two types of grease types can be a big no no too.
Many liquids that enter a bearing can cause corrosion. A washing machine is a tuff environment.
http://www.mustangsplus.com/tech/bearings/rearbear.html
