Originally Posted by
FBinNY
Many Italian bikes are supplied with English BBs.
Meaning the right cup is LH thread. The safe way is to remove the left cup first since they're always RH thread, and use that to determine whether the BB is Italian or English, which will tell you which way the right cup will be threaded.
If you have a caliper, Italian cups are 36mm across the thread crests, while English are slightly smaller than 35mm.
Correct, but I don't think that was the case in 1985 even though it is now. As the OP notes, he really does have an Italian threaded bb.