is this the point where someone trots out a boring graph thats supposed to show that SC bikes don’t work?

Of course they work and the geo of the Nomad is great, but if Honda or Yamaha etc got into mass production mountain bikes they wouldn’t use a counter rotating link design.

What’s the problem with a counter rotating link specifically and what is the best of the suspension designs theoretically? Difficult to answer

I agree a composite single pivot could be super light and super simple and no-one seems to make one?

I don’t think anything is really best but some are better than others 🙂 Plus there’s personal preference around anti-squat levels.

The simplest way to explain the issue with counter rotating links is the leverage forces (rate) acting on the shock are not consistent. They’ve done their best with the Nomad but it still feels like the first 50% or travel is completely different to the second.

For me I think the split-pivot single pivots or recent FSR’s work pretty well. DW’s, Maestro’s and other dual links can be great too, just not quite as supple. Thing is a couple mm of shock link pivot location can have a huge impact so it isn’t just this design is the “best”.

Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder in the case of bikes and I really like both the alpine 160 and nomad

Got to be honest, that alpine looks great but the way it rides has a much bigger influence on me buying one or not. I could happily buy an Alpine 160 27.5 frame with a float x or ccdb but would have stretch to get to a nomad so it would have to be an improvement in performance for an extra 1k.
I know Orange make great bikes but I do wish they would investigate more advanced manufacturing options like hydroforming and maybe composite options. I’d hazard a guess to say its down to cost and wanting to keep things in house and then riding on the “handmade in Britain” selling point. Sometimes evolution is better than revolution and it works for Orange I guess.

C6 thats a great reply and I guess at a subconscious level I’m miffed that Oranage and Whyte do not appear to have not made the same level of investment that some of bikes companies have,that might be part of the reason there is no carbon Orange bikes which is a shame. We need more Hopes and Renthals because it would be great to have British companies leading the way in mountain bike design and manufacturing as well mountain bike components.

Bottom line for me is simple, I’m happy you Orange owners are happy with your bikes, I just wish the more vocal of you paused for breath before having a go because I’m not part of your “tribe” and I have dared to say I think the Orange look is fugly. Happy riding peeps 😀

ps In the interests of fair play and balance I’m still waiting to be totally convinced by any form of VPP suspension and I have been testing and waiting for more years than I care to remember.

pb2, you appear to have missed my point. Can you tell me why Orange need to change the way they build bikes? They’re as light and strong and stiff as all manner of fancier looking hydroformed alloy competitors! Composite is a different world – as another manufacturer (in a totally different market but one that also uses composites) I would generally avoid composites on an environmental and ethical basis. They’re not nice to work with and they’re very hard to recycle. NB: I don’t own an Orange now and never have. And no-one I regularly ride with has one (lots of Yeti & Santa Cruz & Specialized, some Ibis, Transition, etc).

Chute,
Why hydroforming? Why would it improve things? I thought hydroforming tubes gave inconsistent wall thickness and therefor more prone to failure (lapierre).

Genuine question btw

The simplest way to explain the issue with counter rotating links is the leverage forces (rate) acting on the shock are not consistent. They’ve done their best with the Nomad but it still feels like the first 50% or travel is completely different to the second.

Perhaps that is the effect they wanted and it’s actually designed rather than a problem. I can’t fault the feel of the vpp bikes I’ve ridden, partly the change in short and longer travel is one of those things but as said it’s more subjective than good or bad.

I doubt it to be honest. The leverage rate is the opposite to what everyone else (apart from Intense) is doing. The thing is they can’t make the end result anything else unless the actuate the shock from the lower link like the V10. Still, considering the travel they did a pretty good job with the Nomad, the Bronson should have been an easier task with shorter travel/less pivot migration but I (and a few friends) found the suspension awful on that bike.

If that Nomad, with it’s geo and build, had an Enduro back end bolted to it’d be the absolute tits.

and yet people still love them, different tastes and all. Have you considered that you just don’t get the suspension 🙂

I’m not the only one Mike.

Here’s one of those guys who loves them though http://www.peterverdone.com/?p=6519

All the counter-rotating link designs (I think that’s just Intense & Santa Cruz) have a regressive-progressive leverage rate – usually with quite quickly changing rates at the 25% and 75% travel marks. So the damping is firmest at either end of the travel and softest in the middle. The anti-squat curve is the opposite, maximum anti-squat when the suspension is softest and vice versa. So that explains why VPP bikes pedal well.

The thing about that leverage rate is you want the force curve at the wheel (spring rate x leverage rate) to be linear or progressive – anything else feels a bit weird. (Progressive is harder to bottom out so better with shorter travel especially when running a fair amount of sag). You can get that by combining an air shock with a stronger negative spring to make it softer than usual at the start of the stroke. That sorts out the spring curve.

The other issue is the damping – a damper which is shimmed for a linear or progressive curve will be overly damped early in the stroke, reducing small bump sensitivity (compression) and pop (rebound). That isn’t an unsurmountable problem but it does make shock tuning more challenging.

Structurally they have the same benefits as other short link designs with stiff strong uninterrupted triangles front and rear.

It seems that the common-rotating short link designs tend towards more logical leverage curves and can have great pedalling characteristics too. I don’t know the history behind the VPP designs – were they the first short link 4 bars? They clearly work well enough for two of the best MTB brands to stick with them despite their eccentricities – I know that they’re patented and very much a signature of their designs but I don’t believe they’d stick with them if they couldn’t be made to perform.

but if Honda or Yamaha etc got into mass production mountain bikes

Yeh but what do they know about middle aged blokes on pedal bikes? Honda didnt even make their own DH bikes did they?

Intense and best MTB brand should not be in the same sentence !

Up until the recent injection of outside money which appears to be bringing Intense some quality benefits, the quality of Intense bikes was at best hit and miss and at times dreadful. Ask anyone who has known Intense for a few years about the mis-alignment of their frames. My 6.6 was so bad I could not get my head round how it ever left the factory.

I sent Intense a video clip of the frame mis-alignment and they grudgingly replaced it however the replacement frame took 3 months to arrive and I had to have a different colour frame to the one I originally bought, remember this Aluminium frame cost £1,800 in 2007 !

The Intense product registration card was photo copied, hard to read and literally torn off rather than a puka printed document cut to size.Oh and the rear triangle had the stability of moist noodle.

Trouble is there is way too much hype and bollox in sport and both mountain biking and road biking are both classic points in case.I don’t believe a single word of anyone’s marketing. I don’t trust magazine reviews or the opinions of the “brand” online fan boys.

For every sensible and honest online review there will be dozens of iffy ones so the only way to get to the truth of whats right for you is one or two days of test riding a bike across a mix of terrain. This is a very time consuming and at times expensive process but so far every time I have not done this I have ended up regretting spending my hard earned money on what ever it was.

ps I can’t recall if Honda made their downhill bikes or someone made them for them but I for one loved the look of them, its one of a very small number of bikes I have coveted

pps ironically after writing this I thought just how different Orange and Intense are. Intense has been all about the “look”, everything else came second and Orange just don’t seem to give a monkeys about the “look” and do know something I much prefer Orange’s honest approach.

They clearly work well enough for two of the best MTB brands to stick with them despite their eccentricities – I know that they’re patented and very much a signature of their designs but I don’t believe they’d stick with them if they couldn’t be made to perform.

Obviously they can make the work, they’re just a bit flawed from the off. As you say, when the rate change is that far away from linear, how effective is the damping let alone the spring rate? I haven’t seen a rate graph for the Nomad but I’m betting they’ve compromised the last third of the travel (even more than usual) to make it more supple around sag point. It’s a shame as they wouldn’t have to piss about like that with any other design.

The reason they stick with it is marketing. When nobody had R&D or a clue what was going on with suspension manufacturers were snapping up patents to secure a marketing story. Santa Cruz went with the Outland VPP crap and Specialized (I’m sure by luck more than anything else) got the Horst link.

Did vpp not make a lot of sense when shocks where far more basic? I think that generated the appeal of the original blur (which rode way better than a single pivot superlight with a similar shock)

Quick question for JCL, whats your suspension of choice ?

btw Intense license their VPP from Santa Cruz.I’m not sure Intense ever had a puka suspension expert/guru and it makes good sense from an economical and brand positioning perspective to align your expensive boutique brand with SC.

The only other option would be to go the DWL route but with so many variations now on the DWL its no longer as niche or “sexy” as it once was.

He sells specialized……..

I haven’t seen a rate graph for a nomad

No, me neither….

He sells specialized……..

Phew he should be burnt at the stake 😉

My first MTB bike was a 2002 Spesh Enduro Pro with a few blingy bits. It was awful,I’m sure they must have made good bikes but so far they have eluded me.

I thought Intense did VPP first and then Santa Cruz bought into it?

The more I look at these boring graphs and the more I ride my Spitfire, the more certain I am that Keith @ Banshee has absolutely nailed it with his KS-link suspension design (which is a common-rotating short link system with linearly diminishing anti-squat vs travel and a progressive leverage rate).

I hated my demo 8 but I don’t know why

The only other option would be to go the DWL route but with so many variations now on the DWL its no longer as niche or “sexy” as it once was.

What? It’s a suspension link. Sexy? Seriously? Man, people type some weird shit on here sometimes.

I hated my demo 8 but I don’t know why

Odd, I loved mine. But then I love my Santa Cruzes. So I’m either wrong now or was wrong before.

I have to admit to never having looked up the graphs for any bike I’ve owned. Guess I should just get out and ride one of them. A proper demo ride will tell your more than a bit of paper.

My demo replaced a stolen v10 and it was never anywhere near as good

My own fault though: I should have consulted a graph before I bought it

I wanted to know why the bike I’d bought could do what it does – it seemed too good at pedalling and too good at not bottoming out whilst never feeling harsh. The graphs explain it but it took a while to get my head around them – if you aren’t a scientist/engineer I’d imagine it seems like pointless geekery… Sorry, I just like to know how/why stuff works.

Lol, I hated a v10 I tried…

Had a 2-minute spin on the new Alpine and it was enough to confirm my suspicion that it’s mint, and my next do-it-all bike – absolutely perfect for the Pennines, Lakes and abroad.

What? It’s a suspension link. Sexy? Seriously? Man, people type some weird shit on here sometimes.

I don’t think any suspension is sexy you clown 🙄 Thats what the marketing people from the various bike companies you us to think and that was the perspective I was writing from – god I give up !

I owned my demo for a year and my v10 for 2 years – no demoing!

Funny thing is their design suits composite construction more than any other design.

I thought that too. If there had been a composite version I would have probably shortlisted it.

He sells specialized……..

Who does? I don’t even work in the bike industry.

My own fault though: I should have consulted a graph before I bought it

Maybe you should have? You can’t beat testing a bike on familiar trails but if there is information available that can back up your riding experiences, explain why it isn’t what you expected or tell you that the shock is letting it down etc you would have to be pretty narrow minded to dismiss it.

Mike I did an 80k ride over three mountains on the Nomad last month. Really enjoyed it. The geo is more or less perfect. Way better than the 650b Enduro. It’s just a bit lifeless suspension wise, it absorbs everything fine but you can’t lean on it, it just keeps sinking.

Of course they work and the geo of the Nomad is great, but if Honda or Yamaha etc got into mass production mountain bikes they wouldn’t use a counter rotating link design.

Wouldn’t a Honda simply end up resembling an Ancillotti?

http://www.ancillotti.com/images/fry_3-4_big.jpg

Quite possibly!

I’m not the only one Mike.

Here’s one of those guys who loves them though http://www.peterverdone.com/?p=6519

What kind of crazy puts a 95mm stem on a Nomad?

So linkage driven single pivot is what some of us would like by the sound of things.