Words: Orange Bikes
Introducing the Orange Stage 7
Orange Bikes has an obsession with speed. Since day one, way back in the late 80s, the British brand has been built around racing.
The latest chapter in Orange’s story comes with the Stage 7 – a 29″ wheeled, 170/165mm travel enduro race bike that’s built for the world’s fastest courses.
Taking its name from Orange’s ever-popular 29″ wheeled ‘Stage’ family, the Stage 7 goes a bit bigger, faster, and harder. It combines Orange’s new STRANGE power link with big travel and a full 29″ setup for a bike that’s at home at warp speed.
When You Need A Bit More
The aim of the Orange Stage 7 was to create a race bike with an outright focus on speed. Its sibling, the Switch 7 has been received exceptionally well and is already proving itself at the world-class enduro events where tracks are tight and twisty.
But like anything that’s good at everything, there are times when you need a bit more…It’s hard to argue with the flat-out speed that a full 29″ wheeled bike can offer, so with the blueprint of the Switch 7 in hand and feedback from the World Cup team a new warp-speed machine was born.
Handbuilt in Britain
The Stage 7 is a true representation of Orange Bikes’ capabilities in frame development and production. The frame and each individual component have seen extensive FEA analysis and 3D modelling.
The Stage 7 is a UK-made frame, manufactured by the hands of craftsmen with decades of experience, from flat sheets of aerospace grade aluminium to individually custom-fabricated tubes, seam-welded for each specific application, working in harmony with CNCed components from aluminium billet meticulously modelled and analysed. All are produced manufactured and tested in the UK at Orange’s own facility.
This all produces an aluminium frame with a weight less than that of many ‘carbon’ frames in its category. It also means a product that’s strong, durable and fully recyclable at the end-of-life cycle.
Sweating the Details
The Stage 7 is an 29″ wheeled enduro bike, 170mm travel front and 165mm rear. It uses a 205×60 link-driven trunnion shock, mounted low in the frame helping to lower the bike’s centre of gravity and allow for a more neutral weight distribution whilst riding.
A trunnion-mounted shock runs on a full complement of bearings instead of bushings, this allows a very low breakaway force, providing incredible sensitivity to the initial part of the shock’s stroke.
The heart of this dynamic bike is the STRANGE power link. STRANGE (Special Technology RANGE) has been responsible for numerous projects, from prototype frames to general components like grips, for a large proportion of Orange’s existence. It forms a huge part of the development process and has seen some pretty incredible products over the years.
The STRANGE power link allows a considerably more progressive shock curve than Orange bikes have used previously. It’s this shock curve which adds to the truly bottomless feeling that the Stage 7 delivers, but also allows the use of both high-volume air cans or coil shocks. Through the rear shock’s travel, the leverage ratio falls from 3.04 to 2.32.
Looking at shock force, this means the real working progression is 23.7%. The curve was developed so it maintains the fun, confident feel that Orange bikes have become famous for while adding the big-travel requirements of a progressive platform.
With the bike’s kinematics sorted, this race machine also benefits from one of the lowest pivot positions on an Orange to minimise pedal kickback and drivetrain-induced interference, leaving the rider to do the job at hand. Anti-squat numbers for the Stage 7 in the 32/50t gearing start at 128% falling to 106% at full travel.
Around dynamic sag the anti-squat is at 123%, this means that the bike will be efficient on the pedals when pushing hard in or out of the saddle.
The frame is packed with features seen on Orange’s newest generation bikes and are the result of meticulous analysis, testing and feedback.
The Stage 7 sports a 49/56 ZS headtube, this has helped improve both strength and stiffness at the front end of the bike, increasing the surface area for welding between head tube, downtube and toptube as well giving enough room to drop the downtube slightly to allow for a water bottle inside the front triangle.
Bottle access is also even easier with new tooling to create a concave on the top side of the downtube.
The bike also uses a UDH gear hanger incorporating SRAM’s new industry standard and allowing a spare to be bought at nearly every bike shop on the planet.
Technology developed on the most recent Orange bikes also appears on the Stage 7, it has an asymmetrical swingarm, which allowed an increase of the bike’s vertical stiffness whilst tuning its lateral compliance, producing a bike with a direct feel but with buckets of grip.
Focussing on chassis dynamics has been important throughout the Stage 7’s testing program. It’s easy to make a bike too stiff and effectively end up with reduced traction and a “dead” or “wooden” feel to the bike’s ride. A large part of the additional grip being produced by this bike is down to a design that isolates the shock from the lateral forces coming through the frame, particularly during hard cornering and large compressions, so the shock is only loaded in a linear manner.
There were a few reasons for doing this; first to ensure the best possible life of the shock and bearings, second to minimise any external input that could increase friction and hamper the shock’s performance, and third, this linkage design allows control of the swingarm’s lateral compliance using custom designed and manufactured tubes specific for the job.
Throughout the design process, Orange were conscious of the reputation for low-maintenance bikes. Every effort was made to conceal the majority of the bearings within the front of the swingarm, out of harm’s way.
Bikes will come with a 5-year bearing warranty for the original owner and any original owners outside of that period will receive heavily subsidised pricing.
The icing on the cake is the new chainstay and downtube protectors. These keep your pride and joy looking sharper for longer, help dampen chain slap, and impact from stones and are the final details on a bike that has seen an incredible amount of development.
The Orange Stage 7 SE model will make its first public appearance at Eurobike on the 21st of June.
You can learn more about the new Orange Bikes Stage 7 here.
