Why?
The “drillium” craze reached its peak during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The ostensible goal was to save weight. So many folks beleved, then as now, that extra gram on a brake lever would cause them to lose a race, or simply face. So they went against manufacturers’ warnings not to “try this at home and bored into cranks, chainrings, brake calipers and any other part they could reach with a carbide bit.
While some “hokey” parts made sense and were even beautiful, there are some I will never understand. For example, unless you do all of your riding in surgically antiseptic environments, I cannot understand why you would make the inner workings of a hub vulnerable to dirt, dust and moisture.
The funny thing is that this hub has what looks like a partial freewheel attached to it. Did someone remove two cogs (it looks like a five-speed freewheel) to save weight?
Manufacturers always insisted that they drilled—or did anything else to save weight—only as much as they believed was safe. Ironically, some perforated parts—like Campagnolo’s Super Record brake levers and the version of Huret’s Jubilee derailleur with pinpoint holes in its pulley cage—actually weighed a few grams more than their un-drilled counterparts.
I would love to know how (or whether) that hub and freewheel were ridden.
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