THE MISSING LINK

Orange’s new enduro sled boasts 170mm travel, mixed wheel sizes and a linkage suspension design

Prepare to have your flabber gasted, Orange has just released details of its new fullsusser and it doesn’t feature a basic single pivot suspension design. Before you cry heresy and rush up to Halifax with torches aflame, we need to give you a few more details, like the fact it’s actually using a linkage actuated single pivot.

So Orange really is still in the singles market then?

Well yes. But the new bike, called Switch 7, uses something called a linkage actuated single pivot, this means the rear wheel does still pivot around a fixed point. But with the help of FEA analysis and 3D modelling the brand has designed a scissor link to help tune the suspension characteristics.

Are you sure? It looks just like the regular Orange silhouette of old. 100% sure. Although you’re right, Orange has gone to great lengths to make the new bike look like the Stage 6, so the linkage is hidden inside the rear swingarm’s outline. Those canny Yorkshire engineers know how Orange customers like their bikes to look, and they’ve clearly played to that market, at the same time trying to hunt out a new one. the time. Flexy, but grippy and fast as hell, and the linkage really helped give it bottomless travel, progression and a more controlled feel, we said. I’m no marketing manager, but I know an easy win when I see it.

Why has Orange messed with its secret sauce this time around then?

In a word, progression. Orange has some lovely charts to show how the suspension curve ramps up now through its travel, rather than keep its linear feel Orange is famed for, which means as you get to the bottom of the stroke it gets harder and harder to compress, in theory giving a feeling of “unlimited” travel.

The crazy fools, they’ve sacked off years of good suspension feel to the modern holy grail of progression. Well, not quite, because the mid-stroke looks pretty much identical to the old single-pivot bike, with a lovely linear line. If that’s right we can expect the new Switch 7 to retain the Orange feel of old, but stop us bottoming out at the end of the stroke. Orange also says the bike has high anti-squat to help you pedal it efficiently.

And this is a good thing?

Definitely it is, for racing. And this is exactly why the Switch 7 has been built, Orange says its a bike for enduro racing, with 170mm travel front and rear delivered through a trunnion mounted shock, and MX wheels. Progressive bikes are a must have for the rigours of enduro racing when you’re hauling ass in big terrain, where a sudden bottom-out can have you lose grip or, worse, fire you over the bars.

Didn’t the Stage 6 promise to do this though, just a dozen months back? Indeed it did, Orange has been improving the progression of its bikes for years, but there’s a limit to how much you can build in on a single pivot design. Add some links in though and you can control the leverage ratio through the stroke. Really, this change had to happen.

What, because of all the haters out there on the internet, beating down on single pivot designs?

Not that, it’s more that air shocks are naturally progressive in nature, and have increasingly been designed to work with more progressive suspension designs too. That’s gone hand in hand with bike manufacturers developing more progressive bikes too. If Orange wanted to get the most from the best shocks out there – big-volume models like the Fox Float X2, Rockshox Super Deluxe, or Öhlins TTX2 Air – or indeed a coil shock, it was going to have to play ball.

Couldn’t take the pressure, huh?

Very droll. Well, all Orange’s other full sussers retain the single pivot design, zeitgeist pressures notwithstanding.

Don’t say:

Looks just like an old Santa Cruz Superlight

Do say:

Easily the most exciting Orange in years