Cheap "Storm" Bearings: The BSB Speed-11 Ceramic
The BSB Speed 11 bearings are very low cost. They can be had from Aliexpress for $27. Amazon has them, too. They are obviously straight outta-China. Okay, fine, strike one. However, you need to see these things. They are 608ZZ single-shield technically. They use white ceramic ball bearings, a nylon bearing-cage, a zinc-looking-coated metal front-shield, and grey titanium nitride or baked enamel coated upper and lower races. They do not appear to have any actual ABEC rating and even sound loose when spun without lubricant. However, the sound is deceiving because they have nearly as good free-spin as $130 Kwik Ceramics, $90 Swiss, or $80 Bronson Raw bearings. Because they are single-side shielded, they clean easily. I prefer this design. In my little personal freespin records for various bearings I have this one clocked in at 108 seconds with light MetOl on my test wheel setup (a precision setup with a Sure Grip Interceptor wheel on a fixed 8mm solid axle). Sorry I didn't free-spin test them lubeless, which is fun & interesting at times.
Ratings and benchmarks aside the thing about these is that they are cheap, work tremendously better than Reds or something near their price point, and every surface on them is nearly rust proof except the shields, which don't touch the balls or the races (and do appear to be zinc or zinc coated)! I have run them for short periods wet and lubeless (lube was washed out by then). They survived and came back without flat spots & chips on the bearings or losing much freespin. These aren't "performance" ceramic bearings that freespin for 200 seconds. They aren't going to support a heavy skater above 180 for very long without chipping, either. That's ceramics for you. However, they can survive water as mine have done at least 4 times. In all these situations I was skating on an aluminum plate (Arius Platinum) with aluminum trucks but steel axles. I had to clean a bit of rust off the axle but nothing else. Bearings survived being wet and in the trunk of my car for 4 hours at least twice and two more times with only an hour delay before cleaning. In all cases they were pretty dry in terms of lubricant. I know some like grease and grease would have probably survived, especially silicone grease (which isn't as great under load), but in any event I don't use grease much because it drags on freespin with any amount (though admittedly performs well under load) packed in there and you need to pack it in to survive much water exposure. Grease has it's merits, but I prefer metal soap based lubricants because of their light viscosity and superior performance under heavy heat loads. I'll do more service and get the benefit of better bearing performance which is the usual trade-off anyway.
Comments
To be clear when I say grease does well under load I mean Lithium grease, not silicone.
So, just FYI, I've now got around six sets of these bearings in different wheel configurations. I also have had some experience running them all the way down to dry after skating through deep puddles and pouring rain. What happens is that the wheels will lose a ton of freespin and roll, but then if you lube (or better yet, clean and lube) the bearings they all come back to near-perfect condition. I didn't get flat spots or clogging the bearing retainer with rust. So, I would say they actually work better than the old SEBA Storm bearings because they have better roll but still won't rust!
The cleaner and greasier my bearing, the better it will rotate. I clean the acetone seals, treat the inner metal ring gently. then apply skateboard bearing grease on the gaps between the balls.