Orange Five – CCDB Coil to Air CS Worthy Upgrade?

Ride a 2012 Five, weigh 90 kgs ride mainly XC/Trails these days although. Cannock/Degla with local ridding and the odd trip planned to peaks BPW etc an the odd up lift day (exception).

I changed a Fox Float for a CCDB Coil love it but feel its a bit of a lump, however it feels amazing descending but truth is it’s a although the fun bit it’s the minority of my ride.

I’m thinking that’s to get a lighter shock with better pedalling efficiency CCDB Air CS is the way forward, might have to give a little up on the descending performance but over all will be better for me & more suited to what I ride.

Opinions of CCDB Air CS owners and those who have ridden both on a Five welcome plus any other opinions.

Keep the coil shock but change to ti coil if you havent already

For what reason? The weight is irrelevant? CS switch doesn’t add any benefit?

Cos its more bling 😆

Wouldn’t a CCDB Air CS give a better overall performance if you’re not going just for downhill? Plus the climb switch is great, I use mine on pretty much every uphill.

Genuinely can you qualify your reasoning or is it just a flippant comment?

andylc – I don’t know that’s why I’m asking…I think so but wanted other opinions…tell me about your Air CS?

Any other views?

What’s the weight difference?

I’d look at the cost and see about getting lighter wheels but thats not answering your question. Mainly cos I don’t know

Good luck

My reasoning would be that an Orange Five being a single pivot bike is going to suffer fairly badly from pedal bob uphill especially if you’re climbing hard or out of the seat. So unless you spend your time doing uplifts a shock with a climb function would help a lot, and the CS on the CCDB is AMAZING. I can’t directly compare them though having not used a CCDB Coil.
If the CCDB Coil is the best all-round option why do you only see it on downhill bikes as a rule??

I don’t think it’ll be any less good downhill – you can add volume reducers to get the spring to ramp up more whilst with the coil you’re always stuck with a linear spring rate. The Orange 5 design means that your coil spring gives you a falling rate at the wheel, so you have to run more high speed compression to stop hard bottoming. With the air you can run softer HSC which should track better through the roughest bits and hang up less on square edges.

I don’t use the climb switch much but my Spitfire is a very efficient pedaller – however it’s nice to have on longer climbs when I’m knackered!

If you set the ccdb coil up properly youll have virtually no pedal bob. Ive got that set up and never felt im missing the lockout from the rp23 it replaced

RP23 pro pedal was always fairly sh*** though…

True

I have a CCDBA CS on my Spitfire and it’s a bloody good shock, it doesn’t really need the climb switch if I’m being honest. What’s the main reason for changing the coil as I thought it was pretty good?

The damper for the coil is 442g and the air is 509g total, so you would save weight but unless the coil was 1kg in weight would you really notice?

You can’t set up a CCDB to pedal as well as the CS versions without giving up quite a lot of small bump sensitivity and grip (and you can’t run the rebound that slow or you’ll kill all your pop).

An Orange 5 should pedal pretty well with any decent shock – single pivots can pedal efficiently if the pivot is in the right place (this does give high brake squat and pedal kickback but that’s the actual downside of a single pivot).

Cheers for all the responses…I’ve now agreed a sale on my CCDB coil, as soon as I have the cash in my hand I’ll be placing order looks like I can get the CS version from the Euro zone for circa £400.

I like the idea of being able to gain efficiency on climbs and tame trails without compromise of the small bump compliance or descending capabilities of the shock…hope it’s worth it!

I always stick my Fox CTD into climb mode when the trail goes up as everybody knows that a Five needs pro-pedal. I think it was written on the back of those rocks Moses brought down from the mountain. Funny thing is though, whenever I try to leave it open the times don’t seem to be any worse. In fact, unless the trail is pan flat it often ends up being faster.

roverpig – Member
I always stick my Fox CTD into climb mode when the trail goes up as everybody knows that a Five needs pro-pedal. I think it was written on the back of those rocks Moses brought down from the mountain. Funny thing is though, whenever I try to leave it open the times don’t seem to be any worse. In fact, unless the trail is pan flat it often ends up being faster.

Agreed. My Alpine climbs pretty well in Trail mode. On anything other than a road climb, it’s as fast or faster like that than my old HT was. Seems to be more about pivot placement and pedalling technique than the shock platform?

I had the the CCDB coil on the five and now have the air CS on my Alpine. Granted they are different bikes but both orange single pivot. For pure “suspension preformance” the coil feels better. However, the air has advantages in terms of weight (if important for you) and the CS does improve effeciency on climbs. My five had coil front(160’s) and rear and ploughed through anything. My Alpine is air front and rear and 27.5 wheels.It actually rides a lot ‘lighter than my five, climbs and rides much more efficiently and tends to skip over rough stuff more than plough through it.

creamegg – Member
Cos its more bling

Haha, perfect!

Had a DBairCS, was very meh.

In order to build in the CS functionality, they had to get rid of the high speed rebound stack on the main piston, all the rebound being dealt with by the low speed needle valve and high speed poppet valve sitting at the entrance to the piggy back.

Now a low speed needle is how low speed damping is normally controlled, that’s fine, now relying on only an archaic poppet valve to control high seed events is going back in time somewhat. Shims are amazing for controlling oil flow, they’re amazing because you can finely tune the manner in which they deflect in reaction to oil pushing against them, in turn finely controlling the oil through the oil ports they are metering. A basic poppet valve will deflect proportionality to the oil flowing against it, its controlled by a spring, a linear spring. Shims can be setup to deflect in all manner of complex ways.

Just to draw this to a conclusion before i ramble on too much, basically, the rebound control on a CS shock is not sufficient, you either set up the rebound for low-mid speed events or high speed events, not both. Set the poppet valve so its closed enough for low-mid, it’s not open enough for high speed, set the poppet so its open enough for high speed, its too open for low-mid, shims can manage both.

In riding terms, i could never get mine right. Fast enough for traction and patter through mid hits, too fast for jumps etc, id get bucked. Slow it down enough not to get bucked, too slow on mid stuff, so it would pack up.

Went back to rockshox with its “rapid recovery”, ie a tuned rebound stack on the main piston, day and night, problem solved.

Also CS is not like a normal platform, you can’t use it to make flatter stuff more exciting, the slowed down rebound kills that.

You’ll have to tell us how you use a shock to make flatter stuff more exciting…

I was thinking about ways to make my Five a bit lighter and climb a bit better following a ride that I did last weekend with over 3,000 foot of climbing. I thought about a better shock and lighter wheels. Then I realized that, at 6′ tall and 175lb I’m at the top end of the healthy weight range (BMI=24). Even if we allow for the fact that I’m a highly trained athlete, packed full of muscle (in my dreams) I could still drop 15lb from myself without being underweight, which kind of put the notion of spending hundreds of pounds to make the bike a bit lighter or more efficient into context.

Dean, what bike was yours on?

Well the CCDB Coil has gone an now I’m mega confused! Some say that the Air is enough, others Air CS is the way forward…then there is lots of contradiction! Which one?? Arhhhh!

All up to you and how you ride

You’ll soon know – but the lesson you’ll learn is that you can hear whatever you want on this forum 🙂

Either way you’ll have a blast. A 5 is fun whether it’s a coil or air shock

There’s always the inline too.

All I can say is the CS on my CCDB is the first one I’ve ever used that really works. On my RP23 and previous Specialised Shocks I gave up using then because they either didn’t work or made the shock too firm. The CS on the CCDB improves climbing efficiency without seeming to make the shock feel hard or unforgiving. Although my bike will climb just fine with the shock open the CS function does work really well.

In order to build in the CS functionality, they had to get rid of the high speed rebound stack on the main piston, all the rebound being dealt with by the low speed needle valve and high speed poppet valve sitting at the entrance to the piggy back.

The thing is, although I haven’t looked at the innards, I don’t see why the CS would affect the HSC & HSR as it only overrides the LSC & LSR. Are you sure?

cheif, Have a read through this –

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/the-story-of-cane-creeks-new-dbinline-shock.html

You’ll have to tell us how you use a shock to make flatter stuff more exciting…

Because on smoother shallower trails the bike tends to ride higher in it’s travel, altering the effective geometry of the bike.

Nice narky response to someone with an informed opinion because you bought a convoluted piece of crap.

Well the CCDB Coil has gone an now I’m mega confused! Some say that the Air is enough, others Air CS is the way forward…then there is lots of contradiction! Which one?? Arhhhh!

I’d go with a custom shimmed Float X with the remote if you really care about climbing performance or just a Monarch Plus. Keep the coil for Alps/Scotland rides.

Interesting article there dean, but that is talking about the inline, they had to chop up the rebound circuit to get it ‘in the shadow of a fox ctd shock’, surely they didn’t chop up the air CS as well?

“there’s no shims on the rebound side of the piston, just like in the DBair CS”

From the PB article.

I believe that due to the twin tube layout and the CS altering both compression and rebound, it wouldn’t be possible to have the rebound stack and the CS switch doing it’s thing. If i’m honest though, i haven’t quite worked out in my head why not.

All very interesting…I went to my LBS today (an Orange dealer) who reckons that the Monarch Plus Debinair tuned is the way forward. They can get it from Orane or Sram tuned for a Five. Shop Assistant claimed that he rides one on his Alpine over a Bos Kirk or CCDB Air. I wondered if he was just telling me that because they aren’t CC stockist but they are and his owned/ridden both, he said he could sell me either (Monach £345, CCDB £500) I am assuming he’s being stright!?

That would save some £££’s to put towards a set of Pikes which I really fancy.

Do we think that the tune for the Five would be as good as getting it custom tune from TF?

Dean, right you are, I missed that bit in my initial skim through, will give it a proper read later. However in the initial reviews everyone, including PB, claimed it performed exactly as the non CS version with the addition of the CS function. So have they compensated for that somehow and I wonder how much actual difference does it make performance wise?

nwill I think the SRAM tune would be for the bike, whilst TF will tune it for the bike, your weight and riding style. You can have input into the tune speaking to the guys at TF, who in my experience are great and very thorough so personally I’d go with them.

Reading that article it does indeed suggest that the CCDBair-CS only uses shims on the compression damping. I really don’t think Cane Creek would have taken this approach if it was detrimental to the vast majority of users.Dean is suggesting that some situations cause a rider to suffer too much damping through the rough and not enough damping on lips, causing packing down or bucking respectively. I don’t think there would be so many glowing opinions on the CCDB-CS versions if it affected most riders on most frames.

I think the few riders who have a problem are suffering from the combination of their air spring and suspension linkage having too much unloading force in the first third of travel, which would tally with the regressive-progressive curve that Dean’s Mega TR had. They’re also probably going VERY large on jumps (read up on Rampage and you’ll find a very high level of obsession with tuning rebound damping!) With a linear or progressive linkage the rebound force will not be so hard in the first third of travel so it won’t buck as hard and you can run lighter rebound to stop it packing down in the rough.

I’m going to go for the RS RC3 Debonair as my next shock see how it goes then probably get it Avalanched if it isn’t quite perfect.

Get a ccdba cs just do it, I swapped my monarch plus on my 5 and its a totally different bike its night and day trust me.

Shop Assistant claimed that he rides one on his Alpine

See if he’ll let you have a go?