Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Drillium???

I bought an old Schwinn Paramount track bike on eBay a while back (1974). It came with what I thought were some unusual 1970's Campy hubs. They were high-flange road hubs with the rear threaded on one side for a freewheel. The hubs are drilled for 32 spokes, but between the stock spoke holes there were other, round, slightly larger holes drilled. I recently saw another old track bike on the BikeWorks website that had the same hubs and the caption referred to this as "Drillium Treatment" (see link). Anyone know what is up?

http://www.bikecult.com/works/archive/04bicycles/schwpara72T.html

On a somewhat related question: If you watch "Breaking Away" they compete in the end in some sort of track event and their bikes are definitely single-speeds with freewheels...was this some sort of real event? Could this be why my Paramount track bike has hubs designed for a freewheel? The hubs are of the proper era for the frame and are laced to proper period "fiemme" rims, but the roadie/freewheel hub seems odd.

Sweet man, you should get a blank rim drilled with 64 holes and then lace it with half black, half silver spokes for some super strong blingtastic wheels.

http://www.velo-retro.com/peterjohnson.html

F-ing insane

'drillium' is kind of a joke, it's sometimes referred to as a super-light, invisible alloy used to make components lighter. what it really means is drilling holes in stuff to save weight.

Drillium is an old technique of taking a drill to parts to sculpt out some of the material to make them "lighter". In truth, the weight savings is probably negligible, but you get serious cool points for high grade drillium. Particularly if you didn't have any major component failure. I seem to recall seeing a pic of Eddy racing on some seriously drilled drops and being totally freaked out at the thought because those things had to be flexy and weak as all get out.

I thought the bikes in breaking away had coaster brakes. you can see them skidding and coasting.

rules for the little 500:

"To maintain an even competition field in the inaugural 1951 Little 500, Howdy Wilcox contacted the Schwinn Bicycle Company, attempting to get the 40 necessary bicycles donated for that first race. Schwinn officials balked at offering freebies for a first-time race but offered to sell Wilcox some 40 bicycles at wholesale cost. The Little 500 rules and regulations prohibited the bicycles from being altered. Each team was issued one bike, which was used for qualifications, practice and the actual race competition. Under no circumstances would a team be allowed to keep a bicycle out more than two hours at one time, because there were 58 teams signed up for qualifications, which meant there were not enough bikes for each team. Three violations of this rule would automatically eliminate a team from competition."

found here http://iusf.bloomington.com/little5/2003_rider_newsletter_sept26.html

that is some PIMP fu*king $hit.

http://www.velo-retro.com/Spivey%20jpgs/SpiveyCranks.jpg


Crrrack! these were once campy record.

I've seen a couple of guys riding Little 500 bikes around town. Looks kinda fun but not really practical. My friend from Indy tells me that most of the racers are fratboy a-holes.