A can of Five Orange worms

chez_m356

Toasty wrote:

chez_m356 wrote:

hmmm i wonder why i see more stumpjumpers than any other kind of FS bike, could they be popular, i wonder why ?

I generally get on with Specialized because they're looooooong and low, I'm 6'6" and generally far too big for most brands :?

Thats the American colouring 2011 Evo which is what threw me I think

so an L or even XL then?

supersonic

Does anyone buy the latest bikes at full RRP though? I am sure a bit of bartering will reap rewards.

Anonymous

Toasty wrote:

The O5 has:

- Cheaper frame (I'd guess, mass produced carbon vs hand made alloy?)
+ Better wheels (crap plain gauge spokes and cheap hubs, proper Rovals they aint)
+ More expensive brakes
+ Better forks (totally bottom end Fox vs QR15 FIT performance jobbies)
/ Matching groupset, XT/SLX vs X9/X7

Only one part of that is actually to do with the O5, the frame.

All the rest is spec. Buy any frame and spec it up the same, same bike, except the frame. Then you have some form of comparison.

Arguments of value of this and that and weight of a complete bike is less than that one, are null unless you are comparing like with like. The only weight comparison you should do is between two frames (same shock).

supersonic wrote:

Does anyone buy the latest bikes at full RRP though? I am sure a bit of bartering will reap rewards.

Have to be mad to buy at RRP. Bikes are like cars now and retailers sell them similarly, offering discounts off the RRP to attract the buyer, maybe some bartering chucking in freebies or upgrades, and even offering finance packages! (or if it's Halfords, a can of GT85).

My advice is to do as with cars, let some fool buy it at full price and pick it up a year later second hand with massive depreciation, or better an ex-demo or last year's stock reduced in a similar way.

MacAndCheese

I have just brought an Alpine 160 (yes, I realize this is a 5 thread) I'm not an orange fanboy and I really didn't want to like the 160 because it's a complete minger, but after testing one it put a big smile on my face and I couldn't find anything else available frame-only that fitted the bill as well as the Orange.

Anyway, I just wanted to defend the comments about the welding quality. Having had a suspected problem with my SC chameleon frame, I did a thorough check of the orange frame on delivery and as far as I can see the welds are all straight,even and neat. (also wanted to check It wasn't welded by Guy Martin! :shock: ). Also as has been pointed out the 5 is pretty popular frame so if the welding was shoddy and they were prone to breaking I'd imagine it would be all over the net like the Commencal Meta for example.

bennett_346

I got a 2011 stumpjumper fsr comp (£2,000 RRP) for £1399 just by asking down at the lbs... wouldnt of paid near 2k for it.

The Rookie

My take.....as some who rides HT, has only had one ride on a borrowed FS and stuck with HT is
1/ Looks, not a looker for sure, but it does have a functional ruggedness about it(looks wise, regardless of whether it actually is or not), so more Rock Hudson than Clarke Gable I suppose, looks very similar to the GT i-drive (2008ish) a chap in my club rides, regardless I would never be put off a bike due to what it looks like, that is REAL snobbery - but then I ride a home painted Carrera Kraken framed bike!
2/ How it rides, some like it, some don't, it DOES get consistently good reviews, riding is very subjective, what has issues on paper may suite some, if it suites them, fine - vive la difference mes amis!
3/ Build, yeah no argument, weighs more than it needs to with that folded down tube etc and although many frames have good welding, they shouldn't let ANY out that are bad and yet clearly they do.
4/ Spec, not the best, not the worst, but clearly it is sometimes driven by what they can get at the right price at the time resulting in some oddities, on-one run to a similar business model in terms of UK assembly and manage to get it right.
5/ Owners, not met any, clearly they can't ALL be that snobbish, maybe some are, we have a Whyte snob in the club, but he's learnt to keep it under wraps as it always ended up as 19 v 1 (just on principle really!)...

Simon

miss notax

Good grief.... :roll: (not aimed at the post above but the PAGES!)

The marketing department at Orange must be well chuffed about this - 8 pages of free PR on a national forum?!! Fab! No such thing as bad publicity folks

DodgeT

Everybody knows Fred West, but that's not saying you'd want him as a neighbour



I know he's dead before the smart arses start posting:)

miss notax

If you've got everyone talking about something (good or bad) - you're winning

(Although I wouldn't like to live next door to fred West either, not least because he's dead )

Northwind

miss notax wrote:

The marketing department at Orange must be well chuffed about this - 8 pages of free PR on a national forum?!! Fab! No such thing as bad publicity folks

They won't know- no internet in Yorkshire, someone dug up all the pipes and used them to make ugly bikes

schmako

Dem shure ar sum gud pipez!

compositepro

supersonic wrote:

UK manufacture lags behind nowadays.

that was a joke wasnt it??

frankspencer1979

Crikey, I wasn't expecting quite this much of a response, it even encompassed the state of British manfacturing and all I wanted to know was what's wrong with the Five!!

Think the general idea is that some people like them, some people don't. They could be a bit over priced and are a bit heavier than the alternatives, but they should be tough enough for most riders. But apparently some owners are knobs hence the banter.

I don't own a Five, but i'm sure some people think I'm a knob anyway.

Now then..... Who doesn't like the Urge enduro-matic.......!? And roadies eh!? All that lycra!

chez_m356

Northwind wrote:

miss notax wrote:

The marketing department at Orange must be well chuffed about this - 8 pages of free PR on a national forum?!! Fab! No such thing as bad publicity folks

They won't know- no internet in Yorkshire, someone dug up all the pipes and used them to make ugly bikes

not all the pipes, just the ones in halifax, otherwise id be posting on here purely by using the power of my mind :twisted:

DodgeT

frankspencer1979 wrote:

Crikey, I wasn't expecting quite this much of a response, it even encompassed the state of British manfacturing and all I wanted to know was what's wrong with the Five!!

Think the general idea is that some people like them, some people don't. They could be a bit over priced and are a bit heavier than the alternatives, but they should be tough enough for most riders. But apparently some owners are knobs hence the banter.

I don't own a Five, but i'm sure some people think I'm a knob anyway.

Now then..... Who doesn't like the Urge enduro-matic.......!? And roadies eh!? All that lycra!

Keep it that way and you'll be alright

I quite like the urge enduro's, not roadies, and not lycra, not on me anyway :oops:

supersonic

compositepro wrote:

supersonic wrote:

UK manufacture lags behind nowadays.

that was a joke wasnt it??

We have no bike frame or bike part manufacturers here that hydroform, robot weld, or forge parts, or at least none that I know of.

cooldad

Any number of racing car manufacturers though.

Northwind

supersonic wrote:

We have no bike frame or bike part manufacturers here that hydroform, robot weld, or forge parts, or at least none that I know of.

OTOH we make pretty good gigantic jet engines and mindboggling complicated pharmaceuticals. Not sure you can judge british manufacturing by how good we are at making pushbikes.

supersonic

I meant bike manufacturing, not just in general!

Northwind

Well say so then! Honestly, you kids.

compositepro

Hope forge ,hub bodies

In the past orange looked at spf long before hydroforming became the quick and dirty way of making an ok alloy frame and that tube was incredible in what it could have done in general terms

Middleburn looked at forging here in the UK the same company that was doing carabena's for DMR iirc but your right cost was an issue

please take this as a broadly sweeping statement as im sure you cant forge a stem for the same price as a chiwanese factory of acceptable level of qc in the UK but then thats what you use certain manufacturers for what they are good at.

I dont for one minute believe we lag behind anywhere in manufacturing a product on a cost basis at the higher end of the scale even with bikes and that the overhead cost for UK brands is supporting the dealer network and margins to put money in everybodys pocket to make it worth their time in bringing that product to market.

i think but might be wrong now as it was a while ago i read about the company making orange frames that Steve wade has quite a large stake in the company that makes the frames( iirc he part owns it) and as such why use fancy pressings etc when you have a press brake and a machine that cranks 18 downtubes from a sheet of what amounts to 44 quids worth of aluminium if you do the maths its still cheap for a downtube.but then I dont think comparing traditional yorkshire engineering to a world class lean engineering environment is fair like.

What we are doing in this country is overlooking the technology advantage we do have in favour of just outsourcing as its a lower overhead at this time ,I dont think this is sustainable once the magic lightbulb moment occurs or we realize we can be arsed to start doing R&D on bikes that if we use the tech advantage we have to replace a lower labour overhead we can level the playing field somewhat.

We can manufacture the best products in the world with the best techniques and im sure at the prices which are becoming the norm now people are scrutinizing where it was made 1499 for a uk made frame or 1499 for a tai/chi frame not a like for like comparison but which would you buy.

however i think that theres a line in the sand where theres a level of acceptability wether its the best or not the, eastern makers can pretty much give you what you want , a product that will do the job!!! it might not be the be all and end all but and without going into tech head details that dont matter to most folks its quite acceptable to have higher failure rates etc covered by costing that into a products lifecycle so no worries.

but for a certain price when i see a carbon framed bike being sold for 6 8 10k now the mind boggles at what is going on theres certainly not been some kind of quantum leap in pacific rim manufacturing to quantify the cost and despite the hype the materials are no where near that much more expensive so wheres the money going.

Northwind

compositepro wrote:

Hope forge ,hub bodies

Do they forge them in-house? Always seemed like a sensible thing to outsource.

supersonic

I thought they bought in forged blanks, then CNC'd them.

Re carbon frames, a lot of the cost may be in the componentry too - but after market carbon frames are generally more expensive than aluminium. Economies of numbers I suppose, the big factories turn out alu frames pretty quickly! Both of course are highly marked up by the time they reach our shores, and with carbon viewed as more exotic, the retailers will play on this.

Saying that the tide is turning, just look at OnOne. Maybe if the UK cannot bring in the big factories to churn out alu bike frames, we can start building in carbon? Start up looks less, though am purely guessing.

compositepro

dunno just remember a couple of years back a manufacturer asking where hope had their forgings made

ps I'm crap at writing and punctuating

chez_m356

supersonic wrote:

Saying that the tide is turning, just look at OnOne. Maybe if the UK cannot bring in the big factories to churn out alu bike frames, we can start building in carbon?

or grass http://www.bamboobike.co/how-much/ and very expensive grass at that

tom_howard

I have an Orange. It wasn't made in the western hemisphere, much less western Yorkshire (where, incidentally, I was made.) It's not a 5. I really like my Orange. It offers exactly what I want, at a price I could afford. I didn't buy it from a shop. I don't want a 5. I haven't ridden a 5. When I look at other similar bikes I think, "yeah, but it's not my Orange".

Where am I on the sliding scale of fanboi to hater?

benpinnick

6.2

mrmonkfinger

Orange. British bikes made by Brits in the middle of Britain, with British bits made by some other Brits down the road in slightly different part of Britain. So they're EXTREMELY British. Each bike comes with a certificate of Britishness personally signed by the Queen, and a free Beefeater.

Did I miss any important differences between them and the other bike manufacturers?

The Rookie

What like all the Shimano and fox etc stuff? The fact the aluminium is imported?

The 'britishness' is probably 50% of the cost but only 25% of the value (compared to a taiwanese assembled bike of similar spec), buying british is good if it gives the same value as you can import, otherwise your propping up and uncompetative industry that has no incentive to improve, just we did in the 70's when it nearly ruined us.

Simon

toasty

The Beginner wrote:

What like all the Shimano and fox etc stuff? The fact the aluminium is imported?

The 'britishness' is probably 50% of the cost but only 25% of the value (compared to a taiwanese assembled bike of similar spec), buying british is good if it gives the same value as you can import, otherwise your propping up and uncompetative industry that has no incentive to improve, just we did in the 70's when it nearly ruined us.

Simon

50% of the cost for being British? We're back to moaning about them being overpriced again. Which Taiwanese bike are we using for reference now?

Yawn.