Originally Posted by
garethzbarker
Anyway, Sheldon brown writes that you can file them down to accept all cassettes. I'm not a real mechnical guy but I think I see what he is saying. It's fairly obvious what needs to be filed. Has anyone ever done this? How safe is it? Where could I get this done? I'm assuming you would need a grinder b/c the amount of metal that needs to go is a lot.
I wouldn't do it. The 10-speed only freehub bodies were aluminum and had taller splines to prevent "notching" and distortion from the cogs since these splines were softer than previous steel or Ti freehub bodies. Filing them down to accept the shallower grooves in 8, 9 or apparently some 10-speed cassettes will lead to significant damage in use.
I looked at Sheldon Brown's articles on the aluminum freehub bodied Dura Ace and Ultegra hubs and didn't find any reference to his recommending filing these splines down to fit other cassettes. Where did you see it? In fact he specifically recommends against using any aluminum freehub body with Shimano's standard pattern cassettes. The only spline filing recommendation I've ever found from him is to convert older Hyperglide (steel) freehub bodies to Hyperglide-C configuration so they would accept an 11T smallest cog.