Rusty King Race bearings

[jed]

I am not at all impressed with King bearings. Our shop uses only King bearings. We use 8 to 12 sets of rod and main bearings a week so I see and handle A lot of King bearings.
They seem to perform and wear ok but there manufacturing process is sloppy. I would much use ACL or Federal Mogual.

[John@RED]

Just bought another set, same story:

[cgarb]

I know I'm going against the "right way" but for that small amount of rust I would be very tempted to scotch brite the back lightly in those areas and run them. I don't put my drag engine together and expect it to last for 10 seasons without check ups either. It would be something I could keep an eye on at maintenance time. I just tore down an engine I put together about 3 years ago for my step brother and the King HP rod bearings looked almost perfect. The mains on the other hand looked terrible. One had a huge almost gall looking mark and the others had what I thought was debris that had passed through. One bearing even looked like it had a surface crack in the babbitt. It had Wiseco pistons in this engine with coated skirts, most of the coating had flaked off. I figured the skirt coating floating around in the engine could have possibly caused this. I wirebrushed what was left of the coating off the skirts and ordered new bearings.

[ProPower engines]

Just bought another set, same story:

Are you getting from a supplier that has old inventory?? Or are you getting direct from KING??
They look like they may have been on the shelf a long time with extra humidity in the warehouse area where they sat on the shelf. My guess is if the stock is not turned over on a regular basis and replaced with fresh they can get rusty especially if the shop is not vented well and they shelf parts close to a washer