And the seller has added the info to the auction that the frame is a 58. How that's measured is anyone's guess. He mentioned to me
"I'm selling this bike for a good friend of mine. I do believe Bill has owned the bike all of it's life. He owns aprox. 16 different road bikes and has great difficulty parting with even the parts. I'm sorry I don't have any more photos at this time. But...if I can arrange to get some more I'll email you with them attatched."
For what it's worth...
David
> -----Original Message-----
> From: classicrendezvous-admin@bikelist.org
> [mailto:classicrendezvous-admin@bikelist.org]On Behalf Of garth libre
> Sent: October 19, 2001 8:13 PM
> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Subject: [CR]Bianchi needs help
>
>
> Really some of the resident Sherlock Holmes people here!!!!!!
> Forget that the seller says that the frame is an 18 inch frame.
> Forget that the seller says that the standover height is 32.5
> inches. Forget that some of the regulars here are trying to guess
> the frame size by looking at the frame relative to the
> waterbottles. (This reminds me of the people who tried to guess
> the height of Robert Redford by comparing him to the height of an
> average New York City garbage pail that could be found in the
> barefoot scene of "Barefoot in the Park".)
>
> This frame is standard steel tubing. You can always guess the
> size of any old frame in two seconds by looking at the headtube.
> A 52 cm bike has hardly any distance between the top tube and the
> downtube. A 54 cm bike has the start of a classic looking
> separation and the 56 cm starts to look like almost a few inches.
> INHO the 54's 56's and 58's are the pretiest for proportion with
> the 60's looking like the top tube is on stilts. The seller gives
> one crucial piece of information away as to double checking the
> size. He has quoted the bars as 42 cm wide Cinelli's. Cinelli
> measures the bar width from c to c which means that this bike
> couldn't be a small one, as wide bars would be unusable for a
> tiny man. The bike looks for all the world as a 56 cm, and I
> would bet money on it (maybe a 55 or 57). The only thing that
> could be 18 inches on this bike would be the distance from the
> tip of the seat to the rear edge of the handlebars. This is an
> important measurement close to the one prefered by many racers of
> medium height, and one which I frequently hear from some of them
> who are interested in getting good breathing room for racing. (It
> fits with wide bars for breathing and a good stretch to cut wind
> resistance and allow the spine to straighten out a bit.) The
> seller has a super high stem extention which may mean that he
> does some touring on the bike, which might fit with his use of
> wide range triple gearing. In general the way the owner has the
> bike set up indicates that he is a bit ecentric which goes with
> odd and contradictory size quotations. Mark my word, the bike is
> a 56. Garth Libre