PLOT TWIST
Finally got my hands on the bike in question and it already has lowrider bosses (yay! pictures on the listings didn't show the forks clearly and I didn't notice) but they are of the threaded water-bottle type rather than the all-the-way-through type. My first inclination is to just leave them be and use them as they are, but also I do plan to use this bike for bikepacking with a porteur (with the arms attached to these eyelets) and probably lowriders (have an old pair of salsa downunders I was planning on using) as well. My general understanding is that the threaded water bottle type is considered not as strong but also it's not clear to me if there's any real risk of using these fully laden. It seems to me that if those hourglass-shaped eyelets that are brazed onto the surface of tubes can handle a whole rack there's no reason that these couldn't.
I'm going to repaint the whole frame anyways (because I'm brazing pump pegs on the frame and also the paint is pretty trashed elsewhere on both the fork and frame) so it would be a convenient time to drill these out and braze in the tubular all-the-way-through type. Should I bother? Am I right to be worried about loading up big heavy racks with these or is that silly superstition?
Has anyone ever actually experienced frame or rack failure because of this type of eyelet?