I think he had a good sense for the difference between tinkery one-off items for friends on the one hand, and production bikes on the other. His personal preferences can be seen on his meticulously whittled weight weenie builds.

Vintage mtb Workshop did a cool series of instructional posts on how to modify hi-e hubs like WTB did so that you can remove the bearings without disassembling the hub body:

http://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2292959090790929&id=100069150756252