First Look - Orbea Rallon
FIRST LOOK
Orbea Rallon
WORDS & STILL PHOTOS: Matt Wragg
ACTION PHOTOS: Orbea
 | We wanted to have a bicycle that gives you the maximum when you're going downhill. - Xabier Narbaiza, Orbea MTB Product Manager |
As far a bicycle companies go, Orbea is probably the oldest, most-established company you've never heard of. Originally founded in 1840 in the Basque region of Spain, they made their first bicycles way back in 1930. In those 80 years they have grown to be the largest bike company in Spain, but unless you follow road racing or cross-country, we'd forgive you for not being familiar with the name. Looking through their range, their mountain bike focus has clearly been on their more lycra-clad side of things - Julien Absalon piloted one of their bikes to Olympic gold in Beijing in 2008 and the longest travel offering they had ever made was 150mm. That is until now, when they decided to take the emergence of enduro racing seriously and re-purpose their all-mountain bike, the Rallon, for enduro.
‘Enduro’ is a much-misused word right now. Somewhere along the line, it has been corrupted, re-appropriated to cover pretty much everything we previously lumped in under the headings of "all-mountain" or "trail." Today it's connection to the long, tough downhill-focused races in the high, French Alps that spawned the format is all-but forgotten by many. Orbea may be one of the exceptions, as they seem to have a very clear, and pure, understanding of enduro. None of the Orbea staff at the launch showed up with open-face helmets and goggles, or fanny packs. Orbea MTB Product Manager, Xabier Narbaiza, explains:
| We asked our dealers and our riders what they were looking for. We realised that our previous bike was more of a trail, or all-mountain bike and it wasn't right for enduro. The seconds in the race are won downhill, but it needs to be an economic bike going uphill. You don't want to waste energy, so you have 100-percent for when the timing starts, but we really wanted to make it fast, to perform going downhill. And uphill, you will have to sacrifice. Whether it's the main pivot point or taking a fork that isn't lockable, we'll do that. |
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Introducing the Rallon
On first glance, maybe the Rallon doesn't look too radical, or maybe we just didn't expect a company who comes across as straight-laced as Orbea to go down such a road. The introduction to the bike was low-key. The Rallon is unencumbered by complicated acronyms and scientific-sounding materials. It's simply an aluminium frame with 160 millimeters of travel at the front and the rear. Studying it alongside the previous version, its lines are cleaner, the wheel size has been bumped up from 26 to 27.5 inches and the linkage design of the suspension has also been reconfigured. The Rallon looks good, maybe not 'drop what you're doing and sell a kidney' sexy, but it definitely looks purposeful. It's only when Xabier starts talking about the geometry and the suspension that you realize what Orbea have created though.
Details:
• Purpose: Trail/All-mountain/Enduro
• Frame: Aluminum, concentric rear dropout pivot suspension, 160mm travel
• Wheel size: 27.5"
• Shock: BOS Kirk
• Fork: BOS Deville 160mm travel
• 66° head angle
• 420mm chainstays
• Sizes: Small, medium, large, X-large
• Weight: 30.29 lbs
• MSRP: Rallon X Team $6,199
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Suspension
Orbea developed the Rallon’s suspension in partnership with BOS. The well-respected French suspension maker was brought in to review their design at the early prototype stage. Xabier said that with BOS’ feedback, Orbea had to totally change the kinematics of the bike. Instead of having a small rocker link near the top tube, which would have been lighter and easier to produce, the new chassis required a longer rocker arm that pivoted from the down tube to achieve a smoother, more linear leverage rate to get the maximum from the shock. It was one of the keys to achieving the front and rear balance that was Orbea’s primary goal in developing the bike.
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 Coupled with a concentric pivot design, the Rallon has a high pivot, one Orbea claim to be the highest with this sort of suspension layout. On the right is the large rocker arm BOS required to ensure the proper shock rate. |
There are two ways you can control a bike suspension feel: by manipulating the leverage rate of the suspension, or through tuning the shock. Many modern suspensions use linkages to produce complex, custom leverage rates, to offer specific suspension characteristics at different points of the suspension travel. This is usually involves keeping the shock firm in the first part of the stroke to make pedalling easier, then get harder at the end of the stroke to reduce harsh bottom outs. Variable rate suspension linkages, however, complicate the task of tuning the shock.
Being humans, we all tend to have our personal preferences, especially when it comes to suspension feel. With the suspension characteristics hard-wired into a frame the suspension feel is going to be within given range. Orbea and BOS decided to walk the alternate path, with a linear suspension design to allow the shock to have the biggest possible influence on the suspension feel. The BOS Kirk shock that the Rallon was developed around, has rebound, and separate high and low-speed compression adjustments - which means that you can use the shock to tune in the precise suspension characteristics you are looking for. Until recently, this kind of shock technology and approach to suspension setup was only available with coil shocks for downhill and freeride bikes. Although if you find the prospect of this kind of involvement in your suspension tuning intimidating, Orbea do also offer the bike with a Fox Float shock that comes with preset settings.
Working with BOS they didn't consider any of the elements in isolation, but worked on the frame, fork and shock as a complete package. The linear suspension rate of the rear suspension meant that its performance could be closely matched to the fork. Both fork and shock consequently have tunes unique to the Rallon, Orbea are confident this makes this one of the most balanced bikes out there.
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| Both fork and shock have tunes unique to the Rallon |
Concentric Rear Dropout Pivots
Behind that big rocker link is a suspension layout that will look familiar to fans of Trek's Active Braking Pivot or Dave Weagle’s Split Pivot bikes. It uses a similar system with the rear dropout pivots that rotate concentrically around the rear axle. When we quizzed Xabier on the similarities, he said:
| We checked the patents, and this design was there for 100 years - having the pivot point where the seatstays and chainstays rotating around the rear axle. We have been very careful not to infringe on our competitors' patents, but there are opportunities out there that you have to explore. We really respect our competitors' patent rights and encourage others to do the same, and we believe that our concentric rear axle design does not infringe any valid patent rights of our competitors. The main reason we are taking this suspension design is because of the construction. We can make the whole system much lighter, because the dropouts tend to be a little chunkier, when you have a Horst Link, or a pivot above the rear axle, you get a bigger CNC part. The lightest way is to have the most tubing possible. How do you get the maximum amount of tubing? You bring the bearings and all of the linkage to the rear axle. We have our own patents protecting this design because we have the most compact system out there. |
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| A close-up of the dropout and the all-important concentric pivot - this sort of suspension layout means the rear wheel has an axle path like a single pivot bike, but the braking forces are separated from the suspension. |
Magic Numbers
Of course, suspension is only one element, one that can be completely wasted if you wrap the wrong geometry around it. It is here that you can clearly see the difference between what Orbea consider an all-mountain bike and this, an enduro race bike. Compared to the previous Rallon, the top tube was lengthened, the head angle was slackened and the bottom bracket was lowered. In the frame’s lowest suspension setting, this equates to a 338-millimeter bottom bracket height, a 66-degree head angle and an 1172-millimeter wheelbase for a medium-sized bike. In the higher of the two suspension settings, the head angle is 66.5 degrees and the bottom bracket, 345 millimeters.
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| From the very first run, the Orbea was a very easy bike to live with |
For a 650B bike, a 66-degree head angle is slack and with the extra reach from the lengthened top tube, the medium bike began pushing the bike’s wheelbase towards the 1200 millimeter mark, which test riders felt was too long. To combat this, Orbea shortened the chainstays to 420mm. With 650B wheels, 430mm chainstays are generally considered short, 420mm is shorter than most 26-inch-wheeled bikes even. While the primary aim here was to adjust the wheelbase, shorter stays are easier to keep stiff and are one of the major contributing factors in producing a fast-handling bike.
Make no mistake about it, Orbea’s Rallon is pushing on the boundaries of what you can do with an enduro bike and how aggressive you can make the geometry without turning the bike into a full-blown gravity sled. When Orbea’s lead test rider, Simon Andre, talked about head angles,he mentioned that they pushed the Rallon prototypes all the way out to 65 degrees, but after trying different configurations, he found that the ultra-low bottom bracket and the frame’s longer reach made the most impact on high-speed stability. Taken in conjunction with these other factors, a 66-degree head angle proved to be just as stable as a 65 degree head angle, but handled far better at low speeds.
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| Quickly we found the confidence to hit technical sections with some speed |
First Impressions:
 | We threw a leg over a medium-sized bike at the launch and the longer reach was immediately noticeable. It is certainly one of the longer medium bikes we have tried, although, crucially, it still felt shorter than most large frames. Riders in the group who were traditionally on the small/medium cusp tended to favour the small. Pedaling out to the trailhead there was a steep climb and, as we would expect with these kind of geometry numbers, you have to work on your riding position to maintain traction and keep the front in check. That said, power transfer to the back wheel felt pretty good and climbing was comfortable, if not lightning fast. Most of the time, riding an unfamiliar bike once or twice is not enough time to get a good sense of its potential. From the very first descent, however, it was apparent that the Rallon is something rather special. Taking our first runs on the track used for stage four of the final Enduro World Series round in Finale Ligure this year, we were hitting sections like we'd been riding this bike for years - staying off the brakes, chancing lines and throwing it at the corners. What was interesting was that this seemed to be a fairly universal feeling among the group, that with their approach to the suspension the bike can be relatively easily tuned to suit a wide range of riders. All signs point to Orbea’s new enduro machine as being a very, very fast bike. We have taken a Rallon away from the Orbea launch to put some more miles in on it, and will will report back on our long-term findings before long. - Matt Wragg |
www.orbea.com
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They would, no doubt, created a better bike if they would have used 26 and a coilshock instead of an airdamper. They could have gone down to 64 oder 65 HA, saved 1.5kgs and would have built a bike that could be called a Freerider with uphill capabilities.
@Mavic: Enough yellow. It never looked good. We all know you think yellow is great. Many of us dont buy Mavics because of the ugly color. Its so 1999.
if you go to their website, you can upgrade some parts on her... I think I'm in love with a spanish woman!
I'd consider buying one though, it looks fabulous. I wonder if there will be a carbon one next year?
Also, I notice that the shock is very close to the top tube... would a coil shock even fit without twatting the underside of the top tube? If not it would be a shame because I also think air shocks are gash and would want to mount a coil shock.
original. It may have been original to him, but not to history. And the US patent office in particular is notorious for granting patents for already invented technology. Most of their budget comes from fees, and the fees for filling applications aren't as high as the fees for being awarded a patent, and then maintaining it.
patentpending.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/1890_front_and_rear_suspension_bicycle.jpg
Note that the rear axle pivots concentrically to the dropout interface between the seatstay and chainstay, and this was patented ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THREE YEARS ago.
The chainstays look really short, but I am not sure about the head angle...looks really steep.
For a technical example look at the simple designs where there are less patents. It would force companies to compete on grounds of quality and price. Imagine if bikes had to compete based on the merits of their build instead of just charging an arm and leg for special linkages that were really invented during the industrial revolution and then later applied to a bicycle.
Patent trolls stifle innovation, not copy cats.
Specialized's FSR is a true technical patent. It specifies having a pivot below and in front of the rear wheel's axle. It's quite specific and it's apeal to a bicycle application is well documented.
On the other hand, the core of designs like Split Pivot, DW-link, Maestro, etc. have been around for ages in different applications. From industrial machines to door hinges.
These basic designs have been tweaked to serve specific purposes on bicycles, but their simplicity makes them impossible to patent. What you can protect, though, is specific measurements, esthetics, name, and the way that name is marketed.
For example: You can build a concentric chain/seat stay pivot, but can't name it ''Split Pivot'' and you can't use the same measurements. And can't use the same claims that Trek uses.
Bicycles are simple machines, and they've around for a while. Time has weeded out the bad designs. What makes a good product these days is good market research and good marketing. Since what works is out there and easily accessible.
point is moot, except for the greater one that Specialized is one of those companies that prefers to exploit loopholes in the patent act to their advantage even if it means they're essentially committing fraud. They figure they can afford the lawyers and most consumers wouldn't care one way or the other even if they knew what was going on.
Eventually I figured that whether they consciously copied my design or not, they still put some time and computing power to validate the design. And if Spec's think-tank came to same conclusion as I did three years before, well I was right all along!
Some times it's better to take the compliment and move forward than fight a battle that's already lost. Our system obviously does not allows fair fights on these issues.
Me, personally, I like that trend. The goal is to have the most fun of a bike when going down the hill and still being able to climb to the top. Sacrificing climbing a bit, because of better downhill performance does matter for many people, I believe. Especially if they can afford only one bike.
Have not seen many bikes track that well/seem so easy to point (seeeeeem)!
That said I'd love to ride this. I like it. Hope that's alright.
Thanks for adding the comment though.
I did mention the hyper short stays are definitely appealing, but stays alone don't make the bike groundbreaking to me. He said he hasn't seen many AM bikes that track that well, fact is, there's been AM bikes that track that well for 6+ years. The geometry is certainly a step forward, but that hardly means it's on some pedestal sitting by itself.
I could go into the wheelbase being long as it has a long front center, which many of us actually find a bad thing, or how it's another high COG alloy AM frame, but it's not relevant to my point, neither is your post. Medium legged battle bikes have been around for a bit. Not my fault people are just catching on to the genre!
Edit, this isn't to say I don't like it, as my previous posts imply, I'd be absolutely all over this if I didn't just build something up. Happy trails!
I'm only commenting as I regularly ride a 2008 or 2012 lapierre spicy, the older one has 440mm chainstays, whereas the newer one has 425mm chainstays. I have different length stems to compensate for the 1degree slackening off of the head angle, most other measures are equal and near identical builds. While I dont believe one is worse than the other, small changes in chainstay length are surprisingly noticeable, not just the usual bull$*** marketing. I'm not convinced im faster on the 2012, but I do have more fun...
I'm not saying the bike isn't innovative, I'm merely talking a specific point made by a user. Apparently the fact I'm not joining in the circle jerk, and I'm giving credit where credit is due, is a bad thing. My apologies gang.
This bike is pretty cool, full XTR, top end Mavic wheels, RF SixC cranks and bar, RS Reverb, Bos suspension for $6200? I like the 2 models below this one too. The $4300 bike has RF and a Talas and there is a $3100 bike with RF and Fox. Does anyone know how these things hold up to abuse?
This isn't a "circlejerk" as you called it. I don't see what point every member in this thread is "jerking" over. If you could point that out I'd be thrilled to no end. I don't see anyone saying this hasn't been done before, which is the point you keep hammering home. Congrats? You proved something no one said to nobody?
I honestly believe you're just miffed that people aren't agreeing with what you're saying so you're creating issues that don't even exist to try to rally support behind your stance.
This has been a really bizarre comment section to read.
All my point was there are other burly AM bikes. Everything else would be statements that others are shoving in my mouth. That's hardly fair to me, but here we are, still having a go.
I honestly believe you need to work on your reading comprehension.
Edit; also like that a conversation about a frame has completely turned on it's ass and is now about me. Didn't realize I was so fascinating!
Second edit. Definitely work on that reading comprehension. Second comment in this string implies the author of the comment wasn't aware of other AM bikes that were so DH friendly. I've said this I don't know. Four times now? Really. Work on reading.
I never said you were a horrible person, I never said you hate everything about the bike. I never said you were barred from having an opinion. I never shoved statements into your mouth. And don't just sit there telling me I'm downvoting your posts without reading them (really... what the hell). Seriously what is wrong with you? WHERE DID I SAY ANY OF THAT.
Once again, you're creating issues that don't exist. Stop it. And treating you like shit like I HAVE BEEN? What the hell is that supposed to mean? That is my first post in this article. So where else have I been treating you like shit exactly?
See now I'm just pissed.
You want to talk reading comprehension? OKAY!!!!!!
What is this "circlejerk" you seem to think everyone is in on? What point exactly is everyone here supposedly "circlejerking" over? I'd REALLY like you to answer this since you... I guess didn't "comprehend" that question in my previous post.
WHERE did anyone say this hasn't been done before? PLEASE answer this too since you didn't "comprehend" it last time. If you want to defend that stance then I'd like to see who you're even defending it against. And let's be clear here, you specifically said people were saying this.
You want to talk about shoving statements in peoples mouths? You are far and away the worst offender out of everyone here. Now please, go ahead and point out where I said or implied a single thing you just accused me of. DO IT. I triple dog dare you.
You have once again created a lot of issues that didn't even exist, AND!!!! You've successfully managed to do exactly to me what you accused me of doing to you.
If you want to make crazy claims about people you had better be able to back them up, and it seems you can't.
"Didn't insult ya mate, merely said you're having a go where there's no need." The hypocrisy and irony here is palpable.
While Orbea is a great making in my mind, this bike seems to be a nice ticket for them to hop on the "fun 650" train. I am going to keep an eye out at Britton's to see if I can demo one. New? no, but fun looking yes!
Except that you did exactly that. You're trying to play a pity card when it's not necessary mate. You're not even answering the questions people are asking you're just avoiding them like a politician.
I can see this isn't going to go anywhere or get resolved with you, but cyrix has a point, regardless of how pissed off he seems to be.
Get a life.
I thought Mods were supposed to take the high ground instead of causing drama? If any moderaters wants to respond to this, It'd be cool if it wasnt any who were involved in this thread.
This will get erased in about 5 minutes.
That aside, looks a quality bike.
If canadians from Vancouver area wants to know more about Rallon, my buddy César Gairín (spaniard resident in Whistler) will ride the new model in Whistler next season, also he was in the Master podium in Whistler EWS last august, 2nd. You'll find him next enduro season in BC in some races and you can see in action the Rallon there. Ask him is very friendly guy and hard to battle in race...
www.alotrolado-mtb.com/riders/enduro-world-series-crankworx-podium-cesar-gairin
Have a good day !
We just wanna shred with this geometry! But yellow rims suck what do u do Mavic?? Monsieur Dola réagis!!!!
Get a life dude , you know full well what I mean you are just trying to be a try hard ( and making your self look like sad case while you are at it ).
I think I might just buy two pairs of forks for my one bike , yeah.,.
Deduction is a great skill
Has that ever made any sense?