Long Termer Review: Introducing Dave’s Orange Five RS

The Five is accepted as very much Orange’s do it all bike; the stereotypical simple but effective ‘quiver killer’. And with the Five RS the single pivot design gains a single chainring drivetrain to match it’s stripped down simplicity.

Five: Into the wild

I’ve always thought of the Five as a bit like a proper Landrover. A bike that works well and has subtly evolved over time, without too many drastic design updates but rather tweaked to accommodate new directions in technology and riding styles. In it’s latest incarnation the bike has adopted a new wheel size, a 66.5° head angle and now accommodates a 150mm Pike RCT3 up front. All very in keeping with the trail bike ethos while making it very suitable for enduro too.

A clean and simple cockpit

So my aims for the bike are simple (it seemed fitting); ride it everywhere and for everything. All the while using it as a testbed for SRAM’s X01 1×11 drivetrain and to get some longterm time into the Pikes and Monarch suspension too.

For the first five months I’ve ridden the bike very much stock, the only adjustment being a slightly shorter stem; swapping out the stock 75mm Thompson X4 for a slightly shorter 50mm Raceface turbine to keep the handling more in keeping with the livelier trails I’ve been busy throwing the bike down. There’s been an ever changing tyre choice too, but for now I think I’m settled on the Maxxis High Roller II in the rear and WTB Vigilante for now.

All the way to 11

For an off the shelf bike, it’s been good to ride something that’s needed so few tweaks to get it right for how I like a bike to ride (some would probably agree that’s how it should be at this price point but it’s not always the case).

So next up is to get some more miles in through the winter and report back on how it’s faring…