I read the ‘new’ Orange 5 article on the front page

Orange unveils the Brand New 5

I was a little surprised by the following statement

Built to go anywhere and back. Since we we launched the first Five over ten years ago we have had an incredibly low frame failure rate. In the last 12 months it was just 0.47%

By my reckoning that means for every 200 frames they make (or more to the point, I suppose, sell) they expect one to fail.

That actually seems quite high to me. Does anyone know of other companies’ rates or what would be considered industry norm?

That doesn’t mean it snapped in half though does it.

I seem to remember reading that they make about 2500 frames a year. If this is correct, 0.47% would mean 12 frame failures.

I have owned four trek Fuel frames and three of them broke within a calendar year (each failure led to a new warranty frame)
Of the four Lapierre Zesty bikes that people I know have had ( all 2010/2011), three have had cracked chainstays.

My point is that Orange’s failure rate doesn’t sound bad at all compared to some.

Edit:amongst the same cycling group, there have been 6 Orange 5’s, none have had frame failure, poor paint yes, but no structural issues

Does not seem that high really, over 1% may be worrying

How many broken filing cabinets do you see?

depends how they define ‘failure’ but 0.47% is pretty damn impressive.

maybe it’s all the mincers you see on them not giving them a hard time 😉

Everyone knows filling cabinets last decades.

They should think about making them lighter and accepting a few more failures… 🙂

…. and then cut the warranty to 1 year – genius!

I used to work for a 3rd tier automotive supplier. we measured failure in ppm and that was a single digit number.

The frame has failed on each of my previous FS frames – Scott Genius, Commencal Meta 5, Lapierre Zesty (3 times).
So from my experience mountain bike frames have high failure rates.

So from my experience mountain bike frames have high failure rates.

Fairly inevitable when the whole industry is weight obsessed.

Christ Orange must have upped their game recently!

Having owned about 10 of the their full sus bikes over the years (Patriots/222s/223s etc) I’ve had a 100% failure rate – most spectacular fail was an early 222 that literally fell apart.

Still love the etch-sketch designed noisy filing cabinets and wouldn’t hesitate to have another, especially if it’s less likely to snap!

Thing is though Orange frame failures usually aren’t from weightweenying- cracked BBs, cracked welds, usually in the same place every time it happens. And suspension mountings on 22xs because the suspension is designed so that if you bottom out, you bottom out like a champ. But you do hear about it less than you used to.

I’ve no idea what a typical rate is but if you owned 200 frames and rode them all a bunch, you’d be happy if only one broke I reckon.

don’t know about orange, but my homebuilds have broken 5 times in total, and between the two frames I’ve built that give me a 250% failure rate 😯

Thing is though Orange frame failures usually aren’t from weightweenying- cracked BBs, cracked welds, usually in the same place every time it happens. And suspension mountings on 22xs because the suspension is designed so that if you bottom out, you bottom out like a champ.

But that is weightweenying! If things are cracking in the same places then they don’t have enough material there to handle the loading at those points.

250%? I think some respect is due – for the riding if not necessarily the frame building (though it’ll still be better than mine)

I used to work for a 3rd tier automotive supplier. we measured failure in ppm and that was a single digit number

If you made a frame that did that I assume it would be so heavy that no would consider buying one

chiefgrooveguru – Member

But that is weightweenying! If things are cracking in the same places then they don’t have enough material there to handle the loading at those points.

Nah, it’s bad design rather than weightweenying. Especially the falling rate suspension thing, no amount of throwing metal at that would ever make it not stupid.

So, a decent split between people who think it’s good and those that would have expected better like me.

I suppose the key is what they consider ‘failure’ but typically frames don’t fail a little bit (which would be a cable stop coming off for example).

” In the last 12 months “

Is also worth noting.

Not making claims here as I’d ask the same thing about any manufacturer who quoted that, but how many fail shortly after 12 months?

Is it broadly the same trend or does the rate increase massively??

We all know some brands are an absolute no-go as a 2nd hand option, where as others are a fairly safe bet.

The fact that Orange are publishing the 0.47% statistic they obviously feel it’s a pretty good figure within the industry. But the 0.47% covers all riders. Mincers like me will probably never break one, others look at frames as consumables and break them on a regular basis.

don’t know about orange, but my homebuilds have broken 5 times in total, and between the two frames I’ve built that give me a 250% failure rate

Have you learned your lesson yet?

Not making claims here as I’d ask the same thing about any manufacturer who quoted that, but how many fail shortly after 12 months?

All frames will fail eventualy. Most things follow what’s called the bathtub curve, where some will fail in the early stasges of it’s life due to defects, then once th ebad ones are weeded out the rest last for a long time with very few failures, before they all reach their design life.

Which is why a 1 year warrenty or a 7 year warrenty or a ‘lifetime warrenty’ makes very little difference, if it doesn’t break in the first year it’s unlikely to break in the products ‘lifetime’.

And don’t believe the internet. You’ll probably find loads of frames snapped at 13 months, because the ones that snapped at 11months got replaced without a fuss.

I don’t think it is at all bad if you consider the weight, the cost and the forces it sustains with a 15 odd stone bloke hammering down uneven terrain.

Sounds v good to me!

From my Orange owning friends I think the failure rate is something between 60% and 80% (honestly).

They do a five year warranty now though and I’ve seen people get treated fairly by them on warranty.

don’t know about orange, but my homebuilds have broken 5 times in total, and between the two frames I’ve built that give me a 250% failure rate

Have you learned your lesson yet?

I reckon about 5 lessons, all fairly useful I’d imagine!

0.47% failure rate for MTB frames is incredibly small – but as with any statistics i’d take them all with a pinch of salt

A quick review of my high end MTB frames suggest that I have a 38.4% frame failure rate

This covers 13 frames and the failures occurred on 1 XC bonded steel bike, 2 x lightweight titanium XC bikes and 2 x Lappierre Zesty frames

The stats are further skewed by 3 steel frames with very little use, an alloy fatbike frame with no proper abuse and a very high end German tank of a bike

More interestingly, the cheapest frame i’ve ever had – a Carbon 456 took all manner of abuse over a 2 year period and did not fail – top marks to On-One

I’d much prefer to see Orange’s statistics for 7500 frame failures over a 3 year period

I do ride with a lot of folk with Orange’s and the only failure i have seen is on the swing arm of a Alpine – so i’d say they are pretty good

To me frame failures are just part of biking – hence why i’d only spend top dollar on a frame with a good warranty 🙂

0.47% is a nice low sounding number, but it’s completely meaningless.

Is it 0.47% per year or 0.47% lifetime? If my Orange only has a 1 in 200 chance of ever breaking that is impressive, but how would Orange know? Have they tracked the fate of every frame they ever made and how have they allowed for the different ages and designs of those frames when coming up with a percentage to two decimal places? Don’t most frames get ridden (by somebody) until they eventually break? So the lifetime failure rate for any bike frame should be close to 100%.

Maybe it is 0.47% get returned to Orange under warranty. That’s not bad, but as was said above, it may say as much about the riders as the bike. For every sponsored rider ragging the crap out of their Five there are probably 200 mincers like me, who put very little stress on their bike. Plus a few who buy the bike and hardly ever take it out of the shed.

A failure rate expressed as a mean number of riding hours between failure (with a variance and maybe some information on the shape of the distribution) would be useful. But 0.47% is just marketing BS.

Thinking about it, my Five failed when I misunderstood which torque setting applied to which bolt.

Orange were very understanding and helicoiled it for free.