Wheel Bearings - Check and reuse or just replace ?

I'd join Moparts and ask the question there. I'm guessing if you went to NAPA and bought from them you'd be ok. You can also check ebay, just check the box "made in USA" Take them out and inspect them. Have you lightened the car up? That will help on all "wear items".

If you believe that the bearings you are currently using are high quality, there are some things you can do to inspect them and make sure they're still usable.

• Remove the wheel bearings and clean them really well. I found out, sort of by accident, that boiling the bearing in water and cleaner like orange or purple works REALLY well.

• Inspect  the rollers for heat damage, brinelling, overheating, or fretting/galling.

• If they look good, and your grease isn't cooked to paste/powder when you pulled it out, repack it and keep using it

• Clean your race and look for similar abuse as the wheel bearing

We started using NEO HP800 Bearing Grease because of the small bearings and high heat from the brakes we were having bearing failures during the race. The grease was getting cooked to powder. It doesn't work very well at that point.
The NEO allows us to run our rear bearings without fear of failure. We solved the front bearing problem differently, but prior to that solution the
NEO kept the fronts working thorough the weekend, as well.

As far as quality goes, Koyo and SKF still make good bearings, but YMMV.

Buncha overachievers in here.

Historically, I haven't needed to look that hard for that.

put a 383 w/ 440 crank in it, claim it is a 400 and dominate.

Front bearings are such a thing in the Miata world.  Never lost a wheel but we were getting horrendous pad knockback during the last 24 at HPR.  This on super-special-beefy-BMW-machined-to-fit-Miata-hubs bearings with only one other race on them.  After the race we found both fronts had puked grease all over the inside of our wheels. 

So yeah. 

Spare bearings are cheap(ish) insurance.

We clean and repack our inner and outer bearings every race.  They don't require a puller and make it a very quick job.  Last race we inspected and repacked the outer bearing Saturday night.  Took us 15 minutes.

It's surprising to me that you felt the outer bearing needed attention, but not the inner.
The inner bearing takes the majority of the load, while the outer mostly just keeps the assembly in place.
That's why the inner is usually larger than the outer. Though, I s'pose I could be wrong about this.

Just a quick follow up on this topic. The left front wheel bearing failed on us at NH on Day two. I run Timken bearings.  I believe that wheel bearing had 7 Races on it. During the season I did try to check for extra play and any noise but obviously I missed something. When we got it apart - The grease was pretty dry. Not sure if that was the cause or an effect.

So……It looks like the best for our team is to replace the bearings and races once a year. If we run 4 races, we should (?) be OK.