<DIV>I work at a major industrial distributor and for some unknown reason had not utilized them as a source of replacement bearings yet. A flyer at my local field asked me to get replacement bearings for his OS91 VRDF and had me look up the part number. I found out that for at least the OS ducted fan engine they are standard NTN bearings. Tower charges 14.49 for the smaller front bearing and 16.99 for the larger rear one. I looked them up in our system and our cost on the front is $3.79 and the rear is $4.84! Now color me silly, but I think a 251% mark up is a little excessive. If only I could sell anything for that I would be flying a pattern plane made of gold.That doesn't even include shipping because both would have to be shipped so that's a push. Now I can see the price if the bearings are specially made for our application and require seperate tooling or equipment, but we bought and sold about 3.7 million of those last year for industrial
applications alone, and probably have about 250,000 on the shelves of our 650 SCs at any given time. It is obvious that OS buys a standard bearing, renumbers it and sells it to us at a huge profit for their troubles. Another example of the RC market being taken advantage of.</DIV>
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<DIV>Moral of the story: if you can find another source of replacement bearings do it. My company has service centers in 48 states and any of the friendly associates could probably save you money on them. I would even be willing to acquire them and ship em and I would only charge you 150% markup. <vbg> </DIV>
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<DIV>Disclaimer: I know that there are people out there who would say "what about OSs cost overhead, and razor thin margins, and blah.... blah.... blah..." but I really am not concerned about that. I know it costs them X dollars to do business, but my only concern is spreading the word to my fellow RC enthusiasts so that we can stretch our already thin hobby dollar as far as possible. <BR><BR></DIV>