Warp Factor 29 - When every second counts

We've always had an obsession for speed, when you look at our past it's fairly clear to see that racing bikes has been one of the pillars the Orange brand is built on. So when we developed the Switch 7, our greatest enduro bike to date we always knew we would look to produce a full 29er version. It's time to get a move on...

Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives us great pleasure to introduce you to the Stage 7! A 29" wheeled, 170/162mm travel Enduro race bike built for the worlds fastest courses.

Enter the new Stage 7

Taking its name from our ever popular 29" wheeled Stage family of bikes but going that bit bigger, faster, and harder, this bike is taking things a little more seriously.

The aim of the Stage 7 was to create a race bike with an outright focus on speed. Its sibling, the Switch 7 has been received exceptionally well and is truly a perfect weapon for racing at world class enduro events where tracks are tight and twisty. But like anything that's good at everything, there are times when you need a bit more…

It's hard to argue with the flat out speed that a full 29" wheeled bike can offer, so with the blueprint of the Switch 7 in hand and feedback from the World Cup team a new warp speed machine was born.

The Stage 7 is a true representation of Orange Bikes’ capabilities in frame development and production. The frame and each individual component have seen extensive FEA analysis and 3D modelling.
The Stage 7 is a UK made frame, manufactured by the hands of craftsmen with decades of experience, from flat sheets of aerospace grade aluminium to individually custom-fabricated tubes, seam-welded for each specific application, working in harmony with CNCed components from aluminium billet meticulously modelled and analysed. All produced manufactured and tested in the U.K at our own facility.

This all produces an aluminium frame with a weight less than that of many ‘carbon’ frames in its category. It also means we have a product that's strong, durable and fully recyclable at the end-of-life cycle.

Sweating the Details  

The Stage 7 is an 29" wheeled enduro bike, 170mm travel front and 162mm rear. It uses a 205x57.5 link-driven trunnion shock, mounted low in the frame helping to lower the bike's centre of gravity and allow for a more neutral weight distribution whilst riding. A trunnion mounted shock runs on a full complement of bearings instead of bushings, this allows us to achieve a very low break away force, providing incredible sensitivity to the initial part of the shock's stroke.

The heart of this dynamic bike is our STRANGE power link. STRANGE (Special Technology RANGE) has been responsible for numerous projects, from prototype frames to general components like grips, for a large proportion of Orange’s existence. It forms a huge part of our development process and has seen some pretty incredible products over the years.
 
The STRANGE power link allows us to have a considerably more progressive shock curve than our bikes have used previously. It’s this shock curve which adds to the truly bottomless feeling that the Stage 7 delivers, but also allows the use of both high-volume air cans or coil shocks. Through the rear shock’s travel, the leverage ratio falls from 3.04 to 2.32. Looking at shock force, this means the real working progression is 23.7%. The curve was developed so it maintains the fun confident feel that Orange bikes have become famous for while adding the big-travel requirements of a progressive platform.

With the bike’s kinematics sorted, this race machine also benefits from one our lowest pivot position to minimise pedal kickback, and drivetrain induced interference, leaving the rider to do the job at hand. Anti-squat numbers for the Stage 7 in the 32/50t gearing start at 128% falling to 106% at full travel. Around dynamic sag the anti-squat is at 123%, this means that the bike will be efficient on the pedals when pushing hard in or out of the saddle.

The frame is packed with features seen on our newest generation bikes and are the result of meticulous analysis, testing and feedback. The Stage 7 sports a 49/56 ZS headtube, this has helped improve both strength and stiffness at the front end of the bike, increasing the surface area for welding between head tube, downtube and toptube as well giving us enough room to drop the downtube slightly to allow for a water bottle inside the front triangle. We've made bottle access even easier with new tooling to create a concave on the top side of the downtube. The bike also uses a UDH gear hanger incorporating SRAM’s new industry standard and allowing a spare to be bought at nearly every bike shop on the planet.

Technology developed on our most recent bikes also appears on the Stage 7, it has an asymmetrical swingarm, this allowed us to increase the bike's vertical stiffness whilst tuning its lateral compliance, producing a bike with a direct feel but with buckets of grip.
 
Focussing on chassis dynamics has been important throughout the Stage 7’s testing program. It’s easy to make a bike too stiff and effectively end up with reduced traction and a “dead” or “wooden” feel to the bike’s ride. A large part of the additional grip being produced by this bike is down to a design that isolates the shock from the lateral forces coming through the frame particularly during hard cornering and large compressions, so the shock is only loaded in a linear manner. There were a few reasons for doing this; first to ensure the best possible life of the shock and bearings, second to minimise any external input that could increase friction and hamper the shock’s performance, and third, this linkage design allowed us to control the swingarm’s lateral compliance using custom designed and manufactured tubes specific for the job.
 
Throughout the design process we were conscious of our reputation for low maintenance bikes. We made every effort to conceal the majority of our bearings within the front of the swingarm, out of harm's way.

Bikes will come with a 5 year bearing warranty for the original owner and any original owners outside of that period will receive heavily subsidised pricing.
 
The icing on the cake is our new chainstay and downtube protectors. These keep your pride and joy looking sharper for longer, help dampen chain slap, impact from stones and are the final details on a bike that has seen an incredible amount of development.