Does someone known the diameter of Cinelli handle bars? I'm thinking of getting a Velo Orange riser quill stem to get my bars a little higher and they fit a 26.0 diameter bar.

thanks,

they had 2, first a mm over an inch , 26.4,
then they fell back with the others, at 26.0 ..

Cinelli made and still makes many bars. Assuming we're talking vintage it's most likely either 25.4 or 26. If it turns out to be 25.4 you can buy shims to work with 26. (Or make them out of a coke can like Lemond did but that's a little sketchy.)

Cinelli for decades used a proprietary size of 26.4mm. Sometime in the 90s, they switched to 26.0mm. So it depends on how old they are. Really it's best to measure with a vernier caliper.

...this ^^^^ Get one of these at Harbor freight and measure your bar.


Don't try to fit a 26.4 cinelli bar into a 26.0 stem. It's a crime against nature.

Oh yeah forgot about that, disregard earlier post. I was thinking I had a Cinelli 25.4 bar in my collection but now that I think about it, might be 3T or SR or something like that. Numbers are hard.

Yeah the calipers are a good investment. Come to think of it, I misplaced mine some time ago. I should probably replace them.

You're not entirely wrong. The old Cinelli steel handlebars were 25.4mm, I think.

I'd go so far as to say calipers are a necessary tool for working on old bikes.

I use a micrometer and caliper (Dial) regularly at my shop as well as indicators and other measuring equipment and it has made my bike work much easier. I have been grinding custom cutting tools for 45 years and for me proper measuring tools are as useful as a good set of wrenches! No more guessing? I would say for the average bike mechanic the most useful measuring tool would be dial or digital calipers. The digital ones are nice as you can use them in metric mode or SAE. Also they not only measure O.D. but I.D. and depth . Joe

Yes indeed... they started with steel bars for road, track and City Bikes.
Bambino bars too! But those were welded up as an assembly of stem and bar...

Love my Mitutoyu dial calipers, the ones with one revolution per tenth of an inch.
Recently received a mechanical digital micrometer by Brown and Sharpe... the one my grandfather taught me to read when I was 6.
Miss him.

I don't know when Cinelli switched over to or from anything. But think about the numbers. The English used 1 inch, 24.5mm. The Italian standard was 26.0. Cinelli's standard was 26.4mm just to be different, more or less. That's 1 inch plus 1 mm. That's what you might call true multiculturalism. Or just plain strange.

That is strange, I just measured my 2 Cinelli handle bars, Ciocc 26.0 mm and Concorde 26.4 mm . KB

Just for completeness of this thread, Sheldon says Cinelli switched from 26.4 to 26.0 in 1998. That sounds correct to me. They were 26.4 only when I was wrenching.

I'm guessing the bars I have are 26.4 as the bike they are currently on is from the mid-90's, thanks for the info.

As an aside, I have a Bianchi pantographed 3T stem that I had milled out to fit a Cinelli bar back in the 80's which are sitting in a spare parts box in the basement. Who would have known that stem in it's original state is probably a desirable part for a vintage cycling group 30 years later. :-)

the style of "engraving" on Cinelli bars will provide some guidance as to center diameter.
Crest on both sides or one side with different crest for model, most likely if aluminum, 26.4
Winged C Cinelli logo type, and simple model name on the other side, with model name and width noted, like 64-42 most likely 26.4
Cinelli with a pentagram to one side... 26.0 (these were later 80's and 90's)
Model year and Cinelli can be a fraught conjecture. We got orders filled with parts from 2 to 3 decades even. Steel stems with badges, alloy stems with bolts and nuts mixed with allen key styles...
Stampings on top of various styles, some with no stampings.