“We are so confident in performance and longevity of this new innovation that we offer a full LIFETIME warranty that also covers corrosion.“
That quote above is from the Enduro website page for their Maxhit Bottom Bracket, Bearings with a wear warranty, too good to be true surely? Actually its also pretty unheard of in the bike industry, No one offers a guarantee for wear, defects and faliures yes but premature wear and corrosion…for life??
When I was asked to review these bearings and heard the claims I thought to myself, if these bearings are as good as they claim then there are two things I’m concerned about. 1) if they “last forever” then its going to be a pretty boring review, every tester secretly likes a failure! and 2) “forever” means one heck of a long test period, its going to take a while to get a good idea how the bearings are performing.
Luckily I was sent the bearings in November 2023, and its now nearing the end of February 2024 so a decent length of time to use them and also the time of year with the wettest, muddiest, grittiest, most icy and generally miserable time of year. So pretty much perfect for me to attempt to destroy a set of bearings then!
my bike as an MTB style screw in bottom bracket, i run a Shimano standard hollowtech 2 to fit my shimano cranks. A shimano botton bracket (the cheapest) can just about last a winter around here before becoming a bit grounchy, completely seize on one side or fail completely. check out this video to see some of the conditions I’m trying to convey “its all gone a bit waterworld” and that was just one days ride in actually not as bad as normal mud!
The Enduro bearings bottom bracket differs from the standard shimano version as they fit the bearings straight into the shell, there’s no aluminium bearing carrier. This allows bigger ball bearings which give double the load carrying capacity of normal size bearings, I’m no engineer but even I know a larger surface area can help disperse any load and reduce friction.
Shimano on the left, Enduro on the right
Not that my bike goes any where near the sea but its reassuring to know Enduro fit the bottom bracket with marine grease, anything that can stave off salt water is plenty good enough for the local farm slurry and horse shit I seem to find myself riding through on local bridleways. The bottom bracket also comes with a set of seals so you can replace them if needed or just regrease as necessary.
So enough of the science, are they as good as they claim? well after four months of the worst weather we get all year, and its been especially wet this winter too I can report that……they feel as smooth and as good as they were when I fitted them!…..told you it might be boring!
how they looked in February when I removed them to see if there was any wear
The only slight spanner in the works is the price, longevity and performance come at a price, in this case £179.99, with a bog standard original manufactuer bottom bracket costing around £20 you can see that you’d get quite a few of those for the price of one Enduro BB. But, who wants to fiddle about changing bottom brackets? and thats even if you feel confident to do it yourself and have the correct tools. I have the knowledge and the tools but I’d rather be riding my bike more than tinkering in the shed or wondering if the bearings will make it through another few hours of slop. when you think about it piece of mind and performance sort of makes up for the price.
you can find out more details on the Enduro maxhit BB here
To actually hear the bearings and see how they perform before and after a winter of abuse watch my video on youtube. If you like the review and video (actually even if you don’t, I could do with more subscribers!) please take the time to click the subscribe button, it makes a huge difference if you do that.
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