What do we think of the Orange Five?

What do we think of the Orange Five?

Author
Discussion

Ennoch

371 posts

137 months

Wednesday 17th October 2012
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BalhamBadger said:
Good first post!
Cheers! I've been lurking on here a while but only got around to actually joining up today. I write for one of the large mountainbike websites so I have a strong tendency to get all geeky when talking on the subject!

vwsurfbum said:
OL that will be me then on the full carbon 120mm full suspension 29er :lol:
I'm certainly not averse to technology, and given the various bikes I've ridden, raced and owned over the past fifteen years I could hardly argue otherwise! The point I was getting at was that the Five's are a very good, fantastically versatile bike. I have to admit that I'm not a fan of niners but that's because the trails I ride are just too tight and technical for them to show their benefits - put this way, my trail/enduro bike has 160mm forks, 150mm rear, a 36t single ring and a 65deg head angle! And more often than not my winter trail tyres are cut 2.5" spikes...

Back to the point about technology though, bikes are great things and there really are some fantastic innovations and technology coming to the market, but it's not all about the new technology as all too often it's a case of lipstick on a pig! If you're riding smooth and undemanding trails found at any trail centre then weight, rolling and short travel come into it but on the flipside, on our local trails, angles, BB heights and all the other geo factors are a far more pressing concern. Which is why the Five is so successful in the UK as it combines 95% descending performance of a 160mm travel bike with 95% od the climbing performance of a lightweight 140mm trail bike from the likes of Specialized or Scott etc - and with only two bearings they're simple to maintain and remain flop free for far longer than many linkage based designs, especially VPP with their narrow angle links and high leverage placed on them that exacerbates any bearing wear.

Crippo

1,180 posts

219 months

Wednesday 17th October 2012
quotequote all
Brake jack means that the suspension stiffens up noticeably when the rear brake is applied.
This means your tyre loses traction and you go slower.
Why do you think so many downhillers put brake therapy arms on their old bikes before the designs improved.

I have ridden Orange Fives which is why I said I didn't like them

Gooby

9,268 posts

233 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
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Crippo said:
I really dont get them. I know they are the current middle aged mans play thing but they are heavy and very ouitdated. They bob and have chain growth, they have brake jack. The only thing that is great about them is that they are made in Halifax and come in pretty colours. But as a design they are a 3/10 which rises to a 5/10 because they are slack which people seem to like....but then there are planty of other slack bikes out there.
Each to thier own, and that is right and fair but bullst is bullst and this comment is.
Heavy? Mine on winter wheels is 27lbs. Summer wheels it is 25.5 lbs. I have been on carbon fibre bikes with less travel that weigh that on a build that cost £3k more.
Outdated? Honestly? The design has evolved over many years as good and great design does. Are you a creationist?
If it bobs you have not set it up right.
The brake jack happens but the only time I have felt it was down a large hill pedalled out in top gear doing over 40 mph. What little brake jack there was was brought under control by feathering the brakes, which I should have done in the first place. Minimal brake jack is a small price to pay for not having hefty active brake pivots built into the rear axel making the suspension weighty in the exact position you do not want excessive mass. From experience AB pivots stop working in the crappy winter mud anyway.
Chain growth? Really? You do understand how a long cage mech works? No one has used this critism on 5's in years very simply because it isn't valid.

Single pivots have a very old perception as being the lazy/ cheap design and in many cases it is true. The only problem is that only 2 manufactures have got it right. Commencal and Orange. Orange is the only true single pivot because the meta now has a linkage between pivot and shock.

I don't mind this type of comment, they are always brought up in exactly the same way and dredged up from "I don't know where" by someone who hasn't been on a 5. It is fine if you don't like 5's. as I have said many times, it is a marmite bike but at least know why you don't like them instead of dredging up someone else's ignorant critism.

I am actually surprised you missed "ugly and looks like a tractor"

Edited by Gooby on Thursday 18th October 02:37

vwsurfbum

895 posts

210 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
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Gooby said:
"ugly and looks like a tractor"
Well there's no denying that!

LOL

Ennoch

371 posts

137 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
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Crippo said:
Brake jack means that the suspension stiffens up noticeably when the rear brake is applied.
This means your tyre loses traction and you go slower.
Why do you think so many downhillers put brake therapy arms on their old bikes before the designs improved.
In the main, it was snake oil. The old 222 was supposedly a brake jack monster yet I went slower with the arm on than off. Fastest descending bike round our way? The Five. It massively comes down to the way you ride; brake properly and you won’t struggle, lock your brakes mid corner or over large holes and you’ll notice a significant deterioration, but you’ll still notice a deterioration with a bar fitted or on a multi link bike.

You can essentially narrow bike designs down in to three basic categories; single pivot, single pivot with a linkage activated shock, and a true linkage design (such as FSR, VPP or DW). Why this differentiation? Anything that pivots around a fixed point is a single pivot, including Kona, Trek's ABP and Dave Weagle's Split Link (Weagle is incidentally suing Trek for patent infringement). All the links and bars do is drive the shock in a manipulated way, but thanks to newer shock tunes you can actually do this easily enough by placing the shock differently (a good example is the old nearing-regressive 224 vs the new 322 from Orange). Trek and the Split pivot also incorporate an element of floating brake mount into their seatstays (hence Active Brake Pivot), but it's not really necessary if you're using your brakes properly. These aids only ever really mask those who don't brake where they should! As for multi linkage designs, the wheel does not rotate around a fixed pivot on the front end but instead rotates around an imaginary point to produce a different axle path which is unattainable on a single pivot.

So yes, brake jack does exist but only as a function of bad braking!

-C-

518 posts

194 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
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Gooby said:
Summer wheels it is 25.5 lbs. I have been on carbon fibre bikes with less travel that weigh that on a build that cost £3k more.
Spec for that weight?

Gooby

9,268 posts

233 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
Titanium fixings, Race Face Next CF cranks, Full XTR (long cage CF). All bearings and hubs are Chris King, Monkey light bars, Hope mono mini brakes with CF levers (Titanium pins) Hope light weight hoses, XTR cables, Race Face Next CF seat post. Specially machined titanium maxle pin. Floating rotors, KMC hollow pin, hollow link chain. Foam grips, 140mm talas forks, XTR SPD's .. have I missed anything?

Currently finishing the build on the wheels. ZTR crest, ChrisKing, sapim spokes and nipples.

Winter wheels, hope pro3 hubs, maxle superlight pins, hope floating rotors, 819 hoops, DT Swiss spokes, Mountain king tyres (2.4?) Weighty and indestructable!

I have used a huge slab of man math to cost this - The bike when new was £3k less that the fast CF bike I demo'd the other day. I hate to think what I have spent... The new wheels are about £850 .. and there is a few hundred quid in titanium...

Edited by Gooby on Thursday 18th October 13:00

Digga

40,206 posts

282 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
Ennoch said:
You can essentially narrow bike designs down in to three basic categories; single pivot, single pivot with a linkage activated shock, and a true linkage design (such as FSR, VPP or DW).
On the downhill scen right now, especially since the advent of the CCDB shock, there are some immensely successful single pivot with or without linkage designs; Nukeproof Scalp, Morewood Makulu, Transition TR450, Evil Revolt.

FWIW, not having ridden many SP bikes I can't compare, but the Intense 951 VPP system is wonderful - really, really sure-footed - and the greased VPP link seems to hold up well even in UK slop.

missing the VR6

2,320 posts

188 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
Gooby said:
Titanium fixings, Race Face Next CF cranks, Full XTR (long cage CF). All bearings and hubs are Chris King, Monkey light bars, Hope mono mini brakes with CF levers (Titanium pins) Hope light weight hoses, XTR cables, Race Face Next CF seat post. Specially machined titanium maxle pin. Floating rotors, KMC hollow pin, hollow link chain. Foam grips, 140mm talas forks, XTR SPD's .. have I missed anything?

Currently finishing the build on the wheels. ZTR crest, ChrisKing, sapim spokes and nipples.

Winter wheels, hope pro3 hubs, maxle superlight pins, hope floating rotors, 819 hoops, DT Swiss spokes, Mountain king tyres (2.4?) Weighty and indestructable!
That's a pretty epic spec 5, and I thought I'd got a bit carried away on mine! Note to self, must try harder!


Ennoch

371 posts

137 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
Digga said:
FWIW, not having ridden many SP bikes I can't compare, but the Intense 951 VPP system is wonderful - really, really sure-footed - and the greased VPP link seems to hold up well even in UK slop.
Is that the new linkage design with the collets? On the M9 last year I couldn't get the linkage on my M9 (which was the older screw-in design) to hold up for five minutes - at MSA I ended up aralditing it together so the axles would stay in place for a whole run. Which of course then proved interesting when I needed to swap the bearings out at Windham the following week! The new one with collets is night and day better but the astounding thing is that the WC guys the previous year were all having the same issue on the proto's and they left it that way for the early production bikes!

joema

2,644 posts

178 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
Ennoch said:
In the main, it was snake oil. The old 222 was supposedly a brake jack monster yet I went slower with the arm on than off. Fastest descending bike round our way? The Five. It massively comes down to the way you ride; brake properly and you won’t struggle, lock your brakes mid corner or over large holes and you’ll notice a significant deterioration, but you’ll still notice a deterioration with a bar fitted or on a multi link bike.

You can essentially narrow bike designs down in to three basic categories; single pivot, single pivot with a linkage activated shock, and a true linkage design (such as FSR, VPP or DW). Why this differentiation? Anything that pivots around a fixed point is a single pivot, including Kona, Trek's ABP and Dave Weagle's Split Link (Weagle is incidentally suing Trek for patent infringement). All the links and bars do is drive the shock in a manipulated way, but thanks to newer shock tunes you can actually do this easily enough by placing the shock differently (a good example is the old nearing-regressive 224 vs the new 322 from Orange). Trek and the Split pivot also incorporate an element of floating brake mount into their seatstays (hence Active Brake Pivot), but it's not really necessary if you're using your brakes properly. These aids only ever really mask those who don't brake where they should! As for multi linkage designs, the wheel does not rotate around a fixed pivot on the front end but instead rotates around an imaginary point to produce a different axle path which is unattainable on a single pivot.

So yes, brake jack does exist but only as a function of bad braking!
Best thing I ever did to my 222 was get rid of that arm.

Tbh, by and large most bikes work fine. They have done for years. It really is just the rider and whatever we believe the manufacturers tell us. The main component is the rider at te end of the day

Digga

40,206 posts

282 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
Ennoch said:
Digga said:
FWIW, not having ridden many SP bikes I can't compare, but the Intense 951 VPP system is wonderful - really, really sure-footed - and the greased VPP link seems to hold up well even in UK slop.
Is that the new linkage design with the collets?
Errrr, dunno. Perhaps you can see here:



I just ride the thing. And not particularly competatnly at that. biggrin

phil-sti

2,668 posts

178 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
so ennoch, who are you?

ride an M9, write for a magazine? hmmmmmm Nigel Page biggrin

Digga

40,206 posts

282 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
Page was on Nukeproof most, if not all of last year IIRC.

Ennoch

371 posts

137 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
Looks like that's got the newer link on it, they swapped over late summer '11. Basically a copy of the system that Santa Cruz are using on the V10 and the rest of their current range, and night and day better than their previous attempts.

phil-sti said:
so ennoch, who are you?
Well...I'm definitely not Nige, I've got more hair for a start!

Edited by Ennoch on Thursday 18th October 20:11

BalhamBadger

1,159 posts

172 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
Gooby said:
Titanium fixings, Race Face Next CF cranks, Full XTR (long cage CF). All bearings and hubs are Chris King, Monkey light bars, Hope mono mini brakes with CF levers (Titanium pins) Hope light weight hoses, XTR cables, Race Face Next CF seat post. Specially machined titanium maxle pin. Floating rotors, KMC hollow pin, hollow link chain. Foam grips, 140mm talas forks, XTR SPD's .. have I missed anything?

Currently finishing the build on the wheels. ZTR crest, ChrisKing, sapim spokes and nipples.

Winter wheels, hope pro3 hubs, maxle superlight pins, hope floating rotors, 819 hoops, DT Swiss spokes, Mountain king tyres (2.4?) Weighty and indestructable!

I have used a huge slab of man math to cost this - The bike when new was £3k less that the fast CF bike I demo'd the other day. I hate to think what I have spent... The new wheels are about £850 .. and there is a few hundred quid in titanium...

Edited by Gooby on Thursday 18th October 13:00
Pics?

Crippo

1,180 posts

219 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
Ennoch said:
So yes, brake jack does exist but only as a function of bad braking!
Sorry thats rubbish. Thats like saying this bike doesnt go round corners very well, but thats only a result of bad cornering.
I dont want to get hung up on the Brake Jack arguement but please dont say its the resuilt of bad braking.

Gooby

9,268 posts

233 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all


Before the cf cranks and seat post, on winter wheels.

996 sps

6,165 posts

215 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
quotequote all
Gooby said:


Before the cf cranks and seat post, on winter wheels.
Lovely bit of kit!!

vwsurfbum

895 posts

210 months

Friday 19th October 2012
quotequote all
Gooby said:


Before the cf cranks and seat post, on winter wheels.
You left your dog on the wrong side of the fence!