As I have said before, Al, you are the holiest person I have ever known.  

Looking forward to sharing another West Coast brew with you someday soon.  

Once again, I wonder why a bunch of us don’t find some nice warm place to gather at, like Anguilla or Barbados or even Orlando or Vero Beach or (Gasp!) the Florida Panhandle in the winter?  Good beer, good bar racing and, above all, NO SNOW!

Lightening holes are a period-correct, Porschesque accessory that literally any Speedster or Spyder replica owner can have. 

All it takes is a bit of elbow grease (er, cutting oil) and some time. And occasionally some new bits.

I'm Edsnova and I approve this massage.

Maybe a little more often than “occasional” new bits.  

Especially if you’re “Yoda”......    

@edsnova said- "All it takes is a bit of elbow grease (er, cutting oil) and some time. And occasionally some new bits."

Lots, and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of time.

And here and there a new drill bit, but mostly lots of time _{(I think I already said that...)}

And @Bob: IM S6- West coast brew, East coast brew, middle of the continent brew- it doens't matter where...

My internist has suggested that I should shed some tonnage. I considered drilling some lightening holes in my appendages, but the recovery time would be too long......and it would hurt......and be a bit messy.

I think it was Gordon who mentioned drilling holes in the ring gear in another thread; I thought that in the interest of keeping them all in the same place I'd post this here- 

it originally weighed 2129 grams (4 lbs 11 oz) and my efforts removed 399 g (14 oz), so now it weighs 1730 g (3 lb 13 oz). That's an 18 3/4% weight reduction.

Al:  I have just the shift knob for you.

I was reading an article on Singer Porsche in recent Oct R&T -  $1.8M so a little out of my tolerance range.  They even lightened carbon fiber with drilling.  I do like their hood hinges which are also chamfered around holes and polished.

I'm lovin' it, Bob!

So there you have it, folks: to get the ice maker to work on a Speedster, drill holes in it for safer handling.

edsnova posted:

So there you have it, folks: to get the ice maker to work on a Speedster, drill holes in it for safer handling.

... then put 40 pounds of shot weight in the nose. 

Stan Galat posted:

edsnova posted:

So there you have it, folks: to get the ice maker to work on a Speedster, drill holes in it for safer handling.

... then put 40 pounds of shot weight in the nose. 

Gotta keep it down at speed somehow...

Yeah, the wind whistling through all those holes probably causes a lot of lift...   

Gordon, you may have had a Sugino crank -

but I'm pretty sure Al had a Stronglight -

Whoa...........

There we go; someone who takes this seriously!

I just looked up Stronglight, @Sacto Mitch- they've been drilling holes in those gear sets since the 1970's. And right from the beginning the crank arms have had center channels and rounded edges. These guys have been on the cutting edge a long time. 

http://www.classiclightweights...t-timeline-comp.html

Bob: IM S6 posted:

Al:  I have just the shift knob for you.

Wow, I just noticed- not only is it drilled all over the place, it's also hollow. That is just so coooll...

That shift knob would be a cool candidate for a 3-D printed item.  For all you'se guys asking for a 3-D printer for Christmas...

I thought that Campagnolo had drilled cranksets on their high end groups, too, but couldn't find any photos, so maybe it was only the high-end Sugino stuff.  My Sugino crankset (shown above) is on my Takara, now used on my trainer.  In those days (1980) most people building better bikes picked and chose components from different suppliers (unless they chose a complete Campagnolo Groupo) so mine has the Sugino crankset, Suntour Cyclone derailleurs and Dia-Comp Pro brakes.  Those brake levers are drilled (hollow, too), as well as the Suntour shift levers (in the background).  Save weight anywhere you can, I guess.

These old bikes were rolling works of art and people are always impressed when I ride the Takara (although some of my friends are just impressed that it is still going and hasn't fallen apart by now!)  My current bike has the Shimano Ultegra 8000 group set.  Far less pretty, but even lighter and stronger than the Sugino.

I think everything in that photo, combined, might weigh a couple of pounds.  Heck, the whole bike weighs about 12 pounds.

I think the whole drilled-for-lightness thing began in the bike world when some of the premium Italian bike builders started putting custom-made hand-drilled versions of Campagnola chain rings on their best models - probably more for show than anything else. I don't think Campy ever supplied drilled rings themselves. But the notion was born that drilled rings were the ultimate in badass.

Stronglight - a French company that was always chasing Campy's tail in the marketplace - tried to cash in on the 'drilled' panache by offering the chainrings pictured - but these were made of aluminum alloy, so the holes could be cast that way. Campy's crankarms and 'spiders' were alloy, but they kept the rings steel for durability - something the French may not have cared as much about.

At any rate, Campy ruled in the 60's (this was before Shimano became SHIMANO), and Stronglight eventually made a crank that was pretty much a copy of the Campy - as is that Sugino crank of Gordon's, sort of).

Curiously, the crank is to a bike's drivetrain what that drilled flywheel of Al's is to a car's drivetrain. It's a heavy piece where a bike's 'engine' connects to the rest of the drivetrain. And, like on a car, mass there will slow you down in two different ways. There's the dead weight you have to carry around wherever you go, but there's also what the geeky types call the 'angular moment of inertia' of the crank - its reluctance to spin up when you most want it to.

Holes will help on both accounts.

ALB posted:

Bob: IM S6 posted:

Al:  I have just the shift knob for you.

Wow, I just noticed- not only is it drilled all over the place, it's also hollow. That is just so coooll...

I bought it for my car, ‘cause the solid knob that was there was really affecting my 0-60 times...

Yeah, he puts all his fingers in those holes for a better grip  

WOLFGANG posted:

I hate it when Al gets around a wheel rim with his drill press - the wind whistling thru the holes must be deafening!  It does make the grazing deer along the roadway look up though.

I can only guess how long that took, Greg. If you look closely, that wheel was not done with the help of accurate machine equipment (you'd need a very big rotary table to hold that wheel and a correspondingly large milling table to put it all on); it was done somewhat freehand- measure 2, 3, even 4 times, scribe your marks, hope your center punch marks are close and drill away!

  And @edsnova said- "Lightening holes are a period-correct, Porschesque accessory that literally any Speedster or Spyder replica owner can have. "

As well as drilling holes in the frame tubing and various other parts, Let's not forget the pic of the original 550 in Anand's? build thread with the lightened wheels by the then owner.   They are very period correct! Of course, now I'm wondering how much weight those holes removed?

Not as much as you would have, Al. 

One of my favorite things about mid-'50s hole work is the depth of engineering that went into it.

There wasn't any.

Dudes just went at it until it looked done and then raced, and sometimes they found out they had taken away too much material. 

Ok guys, I was over at Bruce's garage last night and we weighed stock irs spring plates, and the results were a little surprising. As I stated earlier, I took off the Sway a Way adjustable units and am using the cut down swingaxle spring plates. The Sway a Way weighed 2550 g while my custom piece weighed 997 for a weight loss of 1553 g (almost 3 1/2 lb) per side. The late single plate unit weighed 1779 g while the earlier double plate piece weighed in at a whopping 2514 g- almost as heavy as the Sway a Way! The plate thickness on both the single and double spring plates is the same- 4 mm.

And as far as I can tell (haven't weighed them, but done a little math) the shorter swing axle torsion bars are about 1lb per side lighter than the longer irs bars. Al

...and with a lot of holes, they  will be even lighter...

Think of how much lighter this '45 Coupe full of holes is for racing .... 

How did my suspension upgrade turn into holes r us?

Jim Gilbert - Madison, Mississippi posted:

How did my suspension upgrade turn into holes r us?

Standard thread drift. It happens once the original question gets happened. Unfortunately, sometimes it happens before the question gets answered.

Well, now we know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall (in Blackburn, Lancashire).

It's good to remember that the spring plates, especially on a swing axle car, are stressed in two directions. I believe it was too many spring plate holes that sidelined (or possibly wrecked) one of the original 90 Spyders. 

edsnova posted:

It's good to remember that the spring plates, especially on a swing axle car, are stressed in two directions. I believe it was too many spring plate holes that sidelined (or possibly wrecked) one of the original 90 Spyders. 

 So what you're saying is since I'm running irs I need more holes in the spring plates?