Technology Digests / Reconditioned Bearing Performance – Phase 4

TD26-005

May 21, 2026
Authors
  • Matt Wenger
  • Brian Lindeman
  • Anish Poudel
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Key Findings

  • Phase 4 of reconditioned bearing performance testing demonstrated that eddy current NDE inspections can accurately predict whether bearing cups will spall early in their service life.
  • The presence or absence of ECA indications within a bearing cup raceway accurately predicted the outcome of service life testing 94 percent of the time.
  • Phase 4 focused specifically on bearing cups with very small ECA indications, a condition that had led to false-positive results in previous studies.
  • Testing has shown that ECA indications measuring 0.005 in.2 or larger are very likely to spall during service.

Reconditioned Bearing Performance – Phase 4

MxV Rail has completed an additional phase in the assessment of an eddy current nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technology to improve the bearing reconditioning process. Whenever a bearing is removed from a wheelset, it must undergo reconditioning before re-use. The reconditioning process includes disassembly, inspection, repair of non-condemnable defects (if needed), and re-assembly of bearings. According to component tracking data, the total number of freight journal bearings that have been reconditioned at least once during their lifetime in North American service has remained steady at approximately 65 percent for both 2024 and 2025.1 In recent years, MxV Rail performed four unique phases of reconditioned bearing performance testing. Phase 1 studied the behavior of various bearings immediately before and after the repair of cup raceway spalls.2 Phases 2 and 3 evaluated the accuracy of eddy current array (ECA) NDE technology in finding indications of raceway defects and predicting whether those indications would…