Dating Cinelli (or other) handlebars?

I'm looking for some handlebars c. 1978-85 but don't know how to judge if ones that come up on eBay merely labelled "vintage" are of the right period. I am mostly looking at the Giro d'Italia and Campione del Mondo models but that's only because I have a Cinelli stem.

Currently I'm just looking for ones with no cable grooves as I don't know what else to go on.

Is there any combination of logos, etchings, sizes etc on bars that can at least give them an "earliest" year? Are there any models of any brands that we know are 1985 at the latest?

A lot of stuff on Velobase unsurprisingly says "80s-90s" which doesn't help much, or "N/A" which doesn't help at all...

(on a related matter, can I trust the reliability of Coke-can-as-shim method of bumping up 25.4 to a 26mm stem clamp?)

Ta,
Andrew.

Hi Andrew

Have a look at the Cinelli bars section of Hilary Stone, he has a few dated 70s 80s and 90s http://www.hilarystone.com/handlebars.html

90s tend to have Cinelli written both sides of the centre ferrule. Here is a picture of mine on my 1980 Raleigh



With regard to shims, I would never shim anything. Vintage Cinelli like this should be 26.4 bars and stem

Cheers
Neil

Hmm, thanks for that. And, re shim, I presume you'll also advise not to try and squeeze a 26.4 bar into a 26 stem.

Might have to mix and match my cockpit brands

Cinelli bars should go with Cinelli stems. Mixing and matching is not recommended. I would also avoid shims. The heraldic logos were used up until 1978 approximately. The flying C logo was used after this. The grooves came out in about 1986

Re:

the cinelli bars pictured above arrived on the market around 1984. the earlier models had the script engraved with the model name and not the model number/ width ID like those above. regardless, they were the same style bars.