Briefly, the frame is a medium Orange Blood, with Rockshox 2Step Lyriks, Race Face cranks, bars, stem and new SRAM XO shifters and Elixir brakes (in pink and purple respectively)
NukeProof wheels, an E-Thirteen chain device and just ignore the saddle and seatpost – they’re off his touring bike…
Chipps adds…
Wow, you stick up a quick picture before going off for a long weekend and look what happens 🙂
To answer some of the questions and comments:
No, that saddle isn’t staying – I clearly said it was just whipped off my tourer because I currently don’t have a 27.2 post spare. Something squishier will go on it. The tyres, too, are easily changed. This isn’t being presented as ‘This is how all bikes should be set up’ – it’s being shown as a ‘Look, I just finished this before the weekend, here’s a quick picture…’
Yes, I AM mainly an All day/XC rider – and as such quite representative of the average Singletrack reader. I figured that as I have the chance to build up such a (silly) bike, perhaps my thoughts and experiences on such a bike might be of interest to those fellow mid-life-crisis riders who wonder if getting a ‘rad’ bike will make them radder (it probably won’t, but it should make being rubbish a whole lot of fun).
I won’t be the only rider on it. It’ll get its share of other testers on it. In fact, if anyone’s passing, they’re welcome to give it a go one evening and show everyone how it’s ‘meant’ to be ridden. It’ll be ridden in Calderdale, but also around the place at trail centres, all day rides and whatever sounds fun. It weighs in at 33lbs currently in the build in the picture. Just swapping the saddle out saved half a pound off that…
There’s nothing wrong with pink. I merely have a dry and rather contrary sense of humour and I figured if I’m going to be riding like I’m on a Barbie bike*, then I might as well showcase it. (* I would say ‘Riding like a girl’ but I know far too many VERY fast girls…)
The anodized components were a mix of what had just been sent in (SRAM XO in pink) and a few bits designed to clash with everything else (the Race Face cranks, Elixirs, pink grips and blue zip ties…) – Lighten up everyone, it’s not meant to be a concours fashion winner. 😉
I’m running Rockshox Lyriks because we’ve not seen a pair of the 2-Steps since our previous pair were recalled a couple of years ago.
How’s that? Keep the comments coming… The near-final build will appear in issue 50 of Singletrack.
Comments (74)
Comments Closed
shopping basket T/F then? Tassles on the end of the bars and she will be completed…
that is sooo distastefully coloured it’s circled right back to sexy again!
Gopping :-$
If this bike is ever used in anger, that tassle on the saddle won’t look so clever.
What size ignitors are they? They look tiny!
I’m not quite convinced myself by the brooks saddle ..
Very pink, very niche…….
I don’t know what’s worse. The saddle or the purple cranks.
horrible
bloody awful, skinny tyres and stoopid saddle.
seatstay pivot ain’t Horst linked, what a shambles.
BB height looks awfully low too – once you’ve sat on it, i reckon pedal strike will afflict you terribly.
sloping TT means way too much seat post extension, i hope there’s no ST bottle mounts ?
overall, NASTY.
Badass!
Rides really nicely though, but not in that colour.
Horrendous.
Enjoy it.
Purple AND pink?
You are Graham Norton and I claim my £5.
“seatstay pivot ain’t Horst linked, what a shambles.”
“BB height looks awfully low too”
… and those are the two things that i think make the Blood brilliant 🙂
Can Orange paint your fingernails the same colour for an extra few quid as well?
looks brilliant, loose the tassle though please!
Can you lot not read?
“ignore the saddle”
Rest of the bike would look ace, if it were a different colour…
ben – how does induced pedal bob and pedal strike appeal to you ?
Isnt that a virtual carbon-copy of a Bottlerocket? £200 for the shock trade(?) so £1,300 for some welded aluminum piping?
the_lecht_rocks: Are you on crack?
Its very Chipps 🙂
“seatstay pivot ain’t Horst linked, what a shambles.”
“BB height looks awfully low too”
what a load of cod’s
looks very similar to my bottle rocket which is fantastic fun even without its horst link and its low bb.
Looks like a right dogs dinner.
And that’s after the dog’s eaten it, wretched it up, eaten it again. and then shat it out the other end 🙂
Can you get a bike any gayer than that?
Can you get a bike any gayer than that?- agree.
http://www.roadrecord.co.uk/images/f/3S8oJKce/Imagefc31cb2e-fd7c-44dd-9b06-a4af960102ec.jpg
Even Bearcluff would wince at going near that bike.
Lovely, in a wrong way. Bet it’s a lot of fun.
Alright if you’re a girl (just), but for a man perhaps a little bit gay.
Perhaps a bike that is so allegedly hyper gay, can only be ridden by someone hyper non-gay?
The Lecht Rocks
Have you ever ridden one? Might be a good idea to try one before you decry it as the worst bike ever. Who cares if it doesn’t have a Horst link or if the BB looks low? It’s surely the way it rides that counts. I tried one of the prototypes and came away really impressed by how it felt compared to my 5 Spot. Will be interested to see if it releases Chipps’s inner hooligan……… :-0
yeah…. it’s just the attention to detail that worries me a bit, the matching purple anodized cranks and brakes and the pink grips. and are those costom decals on the lyrik? I hope it’s going to get ridden properly because you know people’ll be watching
” how does induced pedal bob and pedal strike appeal to you”
Why will it Bob? I’ve always found “proper” 4 bars the most noticeably squating under pedal loading types of bikes that i’ve rode.A Horst Link is there to keep the bike active under braking ( which on 5″ bike is hardly noticable anyway) And Pedal strikes once in a while are a lot better then stupid high BB’s 99% Of the rest of the time IMO.It’s still not as good as My Alpine 5 anyway- Now that has a really Low BB ;]
I think it looks great apart from the weedy looking tyres.
I would build a bike with a simalar colour scheme. :o~
I think it’s safe to say that TLR doesn’t ‘get’ the blood.
Sanny. Respond to my email you sod!! 🙂
RHS no 2
Sorry. Reply coming your way amigo!
That bike SCREAMS “mid life crisis”.
There is a classic pic of Chipps from (I think) the MBUK days with one of his biles at the time, was it a Yo Eddy with Ringle etc kit and everything in 3-D Violet.
Looks like some peoples sense of decorum never matures!
I like the Blood, I like the colour, just don’t like the rest of the stuff on the boike
i hope the seat doesnt stay up most of the time otherwise it`ll be the biggest waste of bike ever.
correct – i don’t get it.
calderdale seems relatively steep and rocky.
if so, it’ll bash pedals all over on the climbs and try to spit you off on fast rocky descents. if you run the correct sag.
if you overcompensate for the pedal strike by boosting preload and reducing sag, it’ll stiffen up and you’ll lose what you’ve gained by designing the suspension in a set way.
usually, if something looks right, it normally is.
in this case , to my untrained eye, it don’t look right.
I’m afraid your untrained eye is positively a “special needs” eye 😉
Climbs are usually done on farm track or roads (for expediency reasons). Pedal striking is not an issue.
Why do you think a low BB will try to spit you off? A low BB makes a bike HUGELY more stable and un-endo-y on steep terrain… and better handling through corners too. The descents this bike is designed for don’t require much (if any) pedalling.
ben 1
TLR 0
It looks (to me) like it would be well suited to bike parks and Coed Llandegla stylee trails, where pedalling in technical terrain is not an issue, nor is going uphill particularly fast and the low BB will help in the berms and such?
my helius AM has a low BB for a 167mm trail bike and i suffer mega pedal strike on air and coil [ccdb] shocks, irrespective of sag.
good luck 🙂
Pink is wrong, even on womens bikes (well my girlfriend says so)
Hitler wasn’t happy when he got a pink bike.
Sorry, here’s a you tube clip of Hitler finding out he got a pink bike:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB-b1RvEC28
“my helius AM has a low BB for a 167mm trail bike and i suffer mega pedal strike on air and coil [ccdb] shocks, irrespective of sag.”
Do you know that you can have you pedals at 2.45 as well as 6pm? ;]
matt – that’s my mistake, thanks 🙂
and i think it’s 3.45 unless you’ve splined your crank arms on out of sync ?
What I dont understand is why Chipps has this as his longtermer? He has stated many times before how he is more of xc rider? And I think the trip to switchbacks proved it..So what sort of meaningful review are we going to get from this? Surely it would ahve been better for one of the other more Dh oriented guys to have this?
It really does look a nonsense. Chipps is no gravity fiend, the cranks clash colour wise with the frame, the seat is too high, the tassle are silly, the tyres are wrong – why even put such a mish mash together if its not to attract attention as opposed to be ridden? There are better thought out subscribers’ new bikes posted on here every day that deserve comment after all the effort and money that has gone into them but this is a joke, irrespective of whether the blood rides well when kitted out better and ridden by the appropriate rider or not. We know Chipps has a pink fettish – remember the pink camo in 2004?
those doors could do with a lick of paint.
Yeah but (rockfield) surely if it helps Chipps to tackle riding he normally wouldn’t try with more confidence and can help him improve his DH/Freeride skills where another bike may not then he will have shown that the bike is capable and works well?
Hope it’s coming to Morzine this summer. Looks like my old Blur4x in disguise.
Well I’m looking forward to having a go on it 🙂
Rockshox and not Fox?
I’ve seen Bloods being ridden hard and fast on sketchy terrain by folk that can ride bikes, and there’s absolutely no problem with the BB height or the suspension configuration – as Ben says, these are partly what make the bike so good. Needs testing by someone who’ll give it the abuse it’s capable of taking, which is basically plenty.
surely its about how it rides? I reckon chipps has ridden an order of magnitude more bikes than most on here, and is better placed to judge. it doesnt matter that he appears to be colour blind. people are too hung up on aesthetics and kit I reckon. mind you, it does provide a nice turnover of kit bargains in the classifieds from people with more money than sense.
hello the lecht rocks can not be serious. end. it’s a bike get a grip (on the grips) ride it…enjoy it…
. . speechless . . .
. . . actually are you looking to employ an aesthetics technician at STW towers? . . . I have plenty of experience
my helius AM has a low BB for a 167mm trail bike and i suffer mega pedal strike on air and coil [ccdb] shocks, irrespective of sag.
That’s a problem you suffer, not everyone will. Most DH bikes have a far lower bb than your helius and you don’t get everyone moaning about them.
Poor workman blames his tools.
anyone know which way the entrance is ???
“Most DH bikes have a far lower bb than your helius”
I don’t think he was referring to riding it like a DH bike all the time though
He did question its ability on techical climbs, which I believe Ben then added that the only climbing it would be doing was on roads and smooth tracks
How much does it weigh? It looks quite heavy? A Blur 4x would EAT that thing for breakfast!
Frame weight is apparently 3.3kg with shock, but I don’t know what kind of shock.
The BB height looks to be the best thing about this bike, certainly when coupled wih the 45″ wheel base and 66 degree head angle. My trail bike has a super low 13.2″ BB with 140mm of travel. Before that it had a 13.7″ BB and 150mm of travel; the bike became noticeable faster around corners when I reduced the travel and dropped the BB.
My contention is that low BBs are key to a bike that rails corners; the Blood looks like it could do everything – light wheels plus air can for trail riding; burly wheels and a spare coil shock for any UK DH track.
This might be the first iteration of a very different bike, but I reckon that Orange are really onto something here and are going to set a trend; it looks like the sort of bike that everyone who ended up buying 160mm trail bikes for the UK, should have bought instead but couldn’t because there wasn’t really any such thing outside of more specialist 4x bikes.
“Ben then added that the only climbing it would be doing was on roads and smooth tracks”
I can’t really comment how/where Chipps is going to ride. I said the Blood was best suited to riding where the climbs are done on smooth/fast surfaces.
Hora – I would’ve thought weight isn’t really that far up the list of what makes a bike ride well on the types of trail the Blood is for. Geometry and suspension action would be though IMO 🙂
Ben the thing with this bike is that at 127mm of travel, there will be people who want to use it as trail/play bike so weight is a bit of an issue within reason. If the frame weight was 4kg with shock, then who wants to pedal that around even for only a few hours. If it weight 3kg (which it more or less appears to) then bingo, you’ve got a 30-31lb trail bike that with a different set of wheels can also be enjoyed on a DH track.
Ouch what have you done to upset hh45 chipps?
Good on chipps for having a go at stuff he hasn’t been comfortable with in the past.
And while I normally bemoan anyone getting too hung up on aesthetics either way, you chose those purple (purple for gods sake!) parts, presumably with an eye to color co-ordination and they look awful. Otherwise I like the look of it.
Er Chipps you missed out the Halo SAS Sam Pilgrim wheels. I’m not sure where you are going with the saddle mind. Still. She’s A beaut.
geetee1972 – yep although people will no doubt want to use if for trail riding, I would imagine the designers would happily point them at the Orange 5 rather than compromise the Blood. Orange should be applauded for designing bikes around geometry and bike-handling first rather than mm of travel 🙂
And once again… that Brooks saddle was only on there so that there was something for the photos… 🙂
errrrr…. liking the saddle but thats it 🙂
I’ll have the forks off you (mail in profile)