The Cinelli briefly offered on squeebay by our illustrious listowner has mid-late 50's (at the latest) Campagnolo rear dropouts.
The "boss" Harvey mentioned was actually added to a new forging around the mid-late 50's and had a hole drilled into it for the spring tang on the tension-sprung Campy Sport derailleur. It was a coupla years at least after that derailleur was introduced. After Campy quit making that derailleur in the early-mid 60's (timeline overseers please chime in for a more definitive date?), the dropout-with-hole was phased out, leaving the boss (but no hole.) Later, (late 60's?) the forging was re-done again, this time without the boss, and dropouts with "the boss" started to disappear from use by the very late 60's.
I just looked at an early 60's Cinelli with "the boss" and hole, a '62 Olmo with "the boss" and the hole, a 70 Atala with "the boss" but no hole, a 71 Falcon San Remo without the boss, and a 72 Colnago with "the boss" (but no hole) so my memory of lots of other bikes is somewhat support by examples I could actually look at tonight.
Two other indicators of "early" (pre-60's) Campagnolo dropouts: one is the font of the campagnolo stampings on the face ("open c" but with "no boss") and the other is the very earliest dropouts in addition to being "open c" had a larger diameter (+1mm?) adjusting screw. Dale's Cinelli has the "open c" stamping on its dropouts for sure. I couldn't tell for sure from the pics if the screw was larger, but it WOULD be pretty obvious, hence "my" dating of mid-late-ish 50's for the dropouts on Dale's bike.
If the screws WERE larger that'd place the dropout age as early-mid 50's.
Campy timeline experts input welcome.
Dale "f.w.i.w." Phelps Montagna lunga Colorado Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 20:30:41 -0400 From: Harvey Sachs
With all due respect, Dale, I believe that the bike is post-1961. Either that, or the right rear dropout has been replaced. It is my understanding, which could be wrong, that 1961 and earlier Campy drop-outs with gear hangers all had a raised boss ~ 5 mm wide with a rounded upper edge. This extended from the gear hanger upwards. In almost all cases, this boss was penetrated by a small hole ~ 1 mm diameter, which was the stop for the tension spring on the Campy Sport and similar derailleurs. The pictures clearly show that this bike has neither boss nor hole.
To me, the simplest hypothesis is that this bike is post-1961. Alternatives: 1) pre-1961, but drop-out replaced later, perhaps when refinished. 2) Harvey's wrong, and there were much earlier drop-outs without the boss and hole. I'd love to find out about such.
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