Hi,
I'm building up a 2013 Orange 5 frame, and not sure which to go for - 140 or 150 forks. Given Rockshox now need a new air assy for different travel, I'd rather get the fork right from the get-go....
Any help?
Cheers
Butts.
Axle to Crown is as important as 10mm of travel for geometry
I don't have an Orange 5 but I originally ordered 150mm forks for my Spitfire but 160mm were delivered. I decided to try it with them at it only raises the BB a few mm and slackens the angles by less than 1/2 degree. After a couple of months of riding it I came to the conclusion that the extra slackness was awesome on fast rough trails and tight greasy ones but on tight twisty grippy trails it was tough to flick the bike around fast enough.
The solution (this is with Pikes): Increase the sag from 25% to 30% (which makes the head angle and BB height the same as 25% sag with 150mm forks), increase the LSC by a click or so and add a bottomless token to stop the fork bottoming out. Magic!
My point is that there's no definitive right and with a good fork 10mm difference is very much within tweakable margins.
Go with 150, if you need to carve tighter corners and handle steep bits add an offset shock bush.
As someone who started out with 160mm 36s on their 2011 Orange Five (547mm a to c), its a difficult one to answer, as others have said its the axle to crown you should be looking at.
Ive since dropped my 36s 10mm to 150mm (537 a to c) and they still feel a touch to long, however 150 Pikes have an a to c of 532mm.
If I was buying a pair now I would go with the150mm Pikes or look for something with similar a to c.
Having said all that, at the end of the day it comes down to personal preference and the type of riding your doing.
Running 150mm Black Box Revs on exactly that frame and it's spot on. Slack enough for super-steep stuff, but the bb is low enough to feel planted. Bike feels nice and agile, too. I'd say anything with a longer axle-to-crown is probably unnecessary, and will mess up the seat angle for climbing.
One of our bikes is a 2014 650b orange five pro. Had the 150mm kashima on from the start, recently swapped them out for pikes 150mm. Performs brilliantly on both options.
Used to run 150mm 32 floats, the geo felt pretty much spot on, but the fork wasn't really beefy enough.
Upped to a 160mm x-fusion slant, mainly because of the fork being stiffer, rather then because of any geo changes. The a2c is longer, and the bike handles noticeably worse on anything other than DH - worth it for me though as I seem to be riding a lot of downhill at the moment.
Depends on what you'll be riding really