This article was originally published in RC Driver’s June 2015 issue.
By Mark Rounge
Fast Eddy bearings have been around for a while (since 1999 to be exact), with their beginnings as an OEM bearing supplier for many major RC companies. In 2006 Fast Eddy Bearings began producing and selling their own products under the brand Team FastEddy. With kits for hundreds of RC products and competitive pricing, Fast Eddy Bearings are definitely worth looking at because we all know how important good bearings are.
WHAT THEY OFFER
Team FastEddy offers a wide variety of bearings for every RC vehicle you can think of. Since there are so many kits offered, they cannot all be listed here so check out their website to see exactly what models are featured. Chances are there is a kit for your exact RC car, making it a one- stop shop for totally re-hauling your vehicle. Fast Eddy Bearings are well known in the 1/5-scale crowd for their high quality components at competitive prices. For instance, a full standard bearing kit for an HPI Baja 5B will only set you back $43 dollars, which by 1/5-scale terms is quite affordable. Even if your vehicle is not offered on the website, it is super easy to piece together a custom kit of your own with every bearing size available and a variety of options for each (you can choose metal, rubber, ceramic, or open bearings for every size). On average they work out to be about a dollar a bearing, which is more than reasonable for a quality product.
Team FastEddy not only produces bearings, their involvement in the 1/5-scale community has driven the company to produce some aftermarket parts, especially for HPI vehicles. You can find everything from shock caps to receiver eliminator kits, again at great prices. Have a big race weekend coming up? Don’t forget to stock up on extra screws, shims and any other hardware you may need to prevent failure. Team FastEddy has all sorts of hardware critical for any RC out there.
If you are into other RC segments as well, Team FastEddy has you covered with bearing kits for many helps, supporting all the major brands you can think of. Being a heli flier myself, I can appreciate the quality and value of a good bearing. With super high RPMs being transmitted from the motor, a bearing failure in the sky can mean a several hundred dollar repair bill. Having everything in a nice pack is an easy way to remind myself to replace and check the bearings regularly and the excellent prices allow me to have extra kits on hand. Also worth mentioning, if you are in any other hobby that utilizes bearings, you can custom order practically any size hardware. You can find other interesting kits on their website, including packages like fishing reel bearings.
HOW TO FIND IT
Fasteddybearings.com is an easy-to-use website, very important when trying to piece together custom orders one bearing at a time. If you have a particular RC model in mind that needs bearings, the first step is to see if Fast Eddy offers a kit for your particular model (chances are they do) which are all found in a nicely organized section of the website. If you have a unique or other brand of RC that is not offered on the website, it is easy to piece together a bearing kit of your own. Start by finding a list of bearings that your vehicle needs (usually you can find a list toward the end of a manual with all the parts listing) and navigate to the metric or fractional bearings section of the site. There you can select any size bearing you need. This is awesome since sometimes rubber shielded bearings are only desired in certain types of vehicles (on-road versus off- road), or maybe you only want the rubber bearings in the wheels to protect from dirt and some metal shielded bearings elsewhere for decreased resistance. After you put together a custom kit, don’t forget to check out the Screws & Accessories sections for extra hardware that will most likely need to be replaced while doing maintenance.
WRAP UP
It is easy to see how Team FastEddy is a useful company to reference when main- taining your RC of choice. Being able to piece together a custom bearing kit with virtually any type of bearing out there is a massive benefit for us hobbyists. Don’t forget to check out Fast Eddy’s 1/5-scale offerings as well, the prices are killer and there is a great range of useful hop-ups.
LINK
Fast Eddy Bearings, fasteddybearings.com (707) 360-0190
