Some bars were designed to be drilled. They'd start to crack before catastrophic failure and the sign of impending doom was a creak from the bars. If the bars creaked you got another set. If they didn't, you were okay.

I rode these until I got Ergo levers.

Bottom of middles (top bar). The holes were factory drilled/cut/whatever. The right hole is elongated so I could get both a brake cable and a shifter cable to come out of it:


Note holes for shifter cable (bar end) as well as brake cable:


The complete post:
http://sprinterdellacasa.blogspot.co...for-crits.html

As a rule, if don't know the bar's history, I'd save it for a trainer/indoors bike or for memories sake, not for a primary bike.

cdr