I have a Cinzia folding bike ...
How do I know it is really an Italian bike, not just a badge-engineered mass-manufactured Far Eastern bike?
Because I took the bottom bracket apart today ...
and it has a 36mm thread size, and both screw-in bearing cups have a right-handed (normal) screw-thread on them!
The "normal fitting" is a "BSA" thread size, which is 1.375inch thread size, with 24 threads per inch, usually in a 68mm width bottom bracket shell, with a "left-hand" thread on the right hand ("fixed") cup, while my Cinzia has a 36mm thread size, with 24 threads per inch, in a 70mm width bottom bracket shell, with a "right-hand" thread on both cups !!!
Only the Italians (and a few deluxe French bike-makers) were unothodox enough to use this fitting!
My Cinzia also has a 25mm seatpost tube, rather than the MUCH more common 25.4mm (1 inch) size.
Yet more evidence that it is not the product of some generic far-Eastern factory that builds countless bikes and just puts different badges and stickers on them ...
So my bike is definitely Italian :-)
I will have LOTS of fun trying to fix it, what with the seemingly random mix of ISO/British and Italian fittings it has :-)
How very ... educational?
How do I know it is really an Italian bike, not just a badge-engineered mass-manufactured Far Eastern bike?
Because I took the bottom bracket apart today ...
and it has a 36mm thread size, and both screw-in bearing cups have a right-handed (normal) screw-thread on them!
The "normal fitting" is a "BSA" thread size, which is 1.375inch thread size, with 24 threads per inch, usually in a 68mm width bottom bracket shell, with a "left-hand" thread on the right hand ("fixed") cup, while my Cinzia has a 36mm thread size, with 24 threads per inch, in a 70mm width bottom bracket shell, with a "right-hand" thread on both cups !!!
Only the Italians (and a few deluxe French bike-makers) were unothodox enough to use this fitting!
My Cinzia also has a 25mm seatpost tube, rather than the MUCH more common 25.4mm (1 inch) size.
Yet more evidence that it is not the product of some generic far-Eastern factory that builds countless bikes and just puts different badges and stickers on them ...
 |
| My Cinzia has a 36mm "right-hand" thread right-hand cup |
So my bike is definitely Italian :-)
I will have LOTS of fun trying to fix it, what with the seemingly random mix of ISO/British and Italian fittings it has :-)
How very ... educational?
 |
| My Cinzia has a 36mm "right-hand" thread left-hand cup |
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