King Engine Bearings has introduced what looks to be several breakthroughs in its new King Racing line of high performance bearings designed to better withstand the harsh demands of–you guessed it–racing.

The new bearings feature a three-layer structure with an outer layer that is the hardest in the industry. This may sound conterproductive because we normally think a good bearing should have a soft outer layer to allow foreign particles and pieces of metal to embed into the bearing and get “swallowed up” so they won’t score the crank and rod journals. But the King Racing bearings utilize softer particles spread throughout the hard outer layer to catch and embed trash and other harmful materials. That allows the rest of the matrix to be tougher or provide an incredible 17,000 psi load capacity and improved fatigue resistance.

King also re-engineered the oiling groove in the bearings for improved performance. The oiling groove may sound like a simple thing, but King was able to increase the bearing’s surface area by narrowing the groove while maintaining the same amount of flow by making the groove slightly deeper. Without widening the bearing King was able to increase the surface area to help improve load distribution across the bearing’s surface.

Finally, King changed the shape of the oil hole. The oil hole, or slot, allows oil from the gallery to pass through the bearing and fill the gap between the bearing and the journal. The easy way to increase oil flow into the bearing is simply to drill a bigger oil hole, but that significantly cuts the strength of the bearing in that area. King has widened the hole only inside the groove to make it easeir for oil to move into the channel without cutting the bearing’s surface area or weakening it.

For more information, you can check out King Engine Bearings’ website here.