As I have said earlier that I have done the same thing that thisisatest did, three holes per space between spokes on the front wheel. It hold up well, I have used it for my everyday training for years. I was also disappointed on the weight saving, so I did not bother to drill on the rear rim.

How big were the holes you drilled?

My view on this is that a 32spoke MTB wheel is FAR more robust than a 20 spoke R500 front wheel.

Sounds like the wheel must have been fairly "soft" to begin with, and the drilling didn't take out much.

Here is a thought actually. Say the R500 rims weigh 500grams (heavy rims medium profile) and you remove maybe 5% of the material(?)
You are going to save 25grams a wheel.
Even 10% off the rim and you save 50grams per wheel

Still going to be heavy wheels, and more likely to fail....

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to the op.. go do it. i mean this IS ww............ duh

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Mass Weenie

The amount of effort and time it's going to take you drill up your heavy aluminum wheels... you could probably spend that time doing some jumping-jacks and drop a pound off your belly, compared to a few grams off your heavy rims. Just saying.

Or working to earn money for a real set of wheels that won't kill you.

Do both.

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Exp001

Real weight weenies.

Simple.

Shimano, or whoever design the product in question, have designed their rim with the spoking pattern in mind from the outset. They will have used a dedicated machine to form the holes for the spokes and valve in such a way that it does not cause stress risers. Additionally, shimano may have, as one poster suggested, used heat or surface hardening treatments. This may very well have been done after the holes were made. Your drilling into the treated metal could have adverse effects that will render the original treatment ineffective.

But as another poster observed, Darwin Awards are still awarded.

this is an r500 wheel. i seriously doubt any surface treatment was done. heat treatment-doubly doubt. drilling w/o causing stress risers- use a very sharp bit, cooling oil... this isnt their topoftheline super-duper rim, this is the cheapest one they make. is it even welded at the seam? what would the heat treatment be for, anyway? as i said before, there are so many much, much stupider things done every day by members of this very forum, i dont see why everyone's getting so critical with this one. it's not like he's drilling holes in his TIRES or INNER TUBES.

drilling tires or tubes that might actually be safer...

Yeah, seriously. It's like WW has a forum full of non-weight weenies all of a sudden. WTF are you all doing here if you aren't interested in tuning and getting the most out of your components as the very basis of the forum? The CycleChat and Pro talk and all the other stuff is just icing on the cake.

Besides, donald, who has the lightest bike on the forum and has tuned everything from low-end components to high-end ones, has personally tuned/drilled and modified MAGNESIUM clincher rims from a non-major manufacturer that doesn't even exist anymore (well, maybe the guy is alive, but the rims are not produced anymore). He rides them every single day for countless miles... No catastrophic failures to make people on the internet have their inflated fears verified.

...and people here are whinging over someone doing calculated drills on a heavy-ass low-end Shimano rim?


People say its easier to lose weight elsewhere - no sh*t. Why not do both?
People say its easier to make a lot of money to pay for higher end components... yes, but so what? Why should that stop anyone from modifying components on their free time, high end or not? Besides, WW is NOT about buying the lightest and most boutique out there, although some people especially recently have taken that route instead of using their heads to figure things out, taking the effort to modify and tune components, and building up the bikes themselves.

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Exp001

One can be a WW, but it doesn't have to be in every bike component nor at the expense of anything whether it be cash, ride quality, etc.

When it potentially involves safety, then no amount of weight is worth risking your life for. Whether those concerns are founded, I don't know. Just intuitively to a lot of people, it seems that drilling holes in a wheel is going to weaken the rim and cause it to fail. I can see why people would get worked up about it- if this really is an unsafe project and the rim fails during a group ride because of that, other lives are also put at risk.

Personally, I just see these kinds of wheels serve their purpose as training wheels where weight isn't really a concern- as they say, you can't polish a turd. I believe people are overblowing the safety issue as these wheels are way overbuilt.

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2012 Cannondale CAAD10

So, how'd it go?

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"Nothing compares to the simple pleasures of a bike ride," said John F. Kennedy, a man who had the pleasure of Marilyn Monroe.

Dead? Hospital? Dentist?

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Just spend $300 and build a niobium clincher already. This is a really pointless discussion. All this effort to get to 1600 grams is pointless when lighter wheelsets are a dime a dozen.