Orange identification help, please.

I was at the velodrome the other day and got chatting to a fella about the retro bike scene and he mentioned he had an old bike gathering dust in the garage... 50 quid changed hands and on Friday this bike got delivered to my house. I'm not in the UK at the moment, but the wife took some pics and sent them to me with an e-mail along the lines of "yet another c**p old bike arrived - did you know it has just one gear..."! :roll:

Anyway any idea what it is? I'm more of a Kona fan, but looking at the Orange catalogues here I'd say it was a 1994 / 5 model P7. Strange thing is the top tube cable mounts look to be an older vintage, yet it has Crud Catcher mounts on the down tube. The Pace forks look tired, are they air or elastomer? Can I get spares easily enough? Any advice you have would be great. Cheers.

Looks like a or C16, orange were always tweaking things.

Sorting out the forks will be no problem just talk to justbackdated on here, he will sort you out.

I'd say you got a bargain with those forks and an orange frame, even if it does need work. lucky sod!

Cheers for the tip about justbackdated, I've PM'd him for some advice on the cost of sorting the forks.

The Ken, a bargain? Like the wife says "it's got no gears"!! What is the craic with single speeders anyway? I just don't understand not having gears!

I was actually after a first-year Kona, but this kind of fell into my lap. I dunno what I'll do with it, maybe just service the forks and keep it as a summer evening steed.

Bargain of the week !

That is a really nice bike with some trick parts too. RC35's dont have much travel anyway as they are proper retro, they are elastomer btw.

Cheers

You've got the same year of forks that I have - the '93/4 model.

Those stickers below the RC35 aren't original though.

About the frame: it looks a lot like my old Prestige especially with that re-enforcing collar around the seat tube. That and the rear cable stop too. The crud catcher mounts could have been added by any decent frame builder though.

justbackdated has informed me that the forks are 1994 RC35 XCS, maybe the frame is the same vintage? The cable mounts certainly look like the earlier bikes, maybe the frame is a transition model?

Defo a bargain mate- if you don't like it I'll give you £100 for it- and we will both be happy

Single speed rocks- give it a go, amazing what you can climb with just the one gear.

Xesh":hzffs2e6 said:

You've got the same year of forks that I have - the '93/4 model.

Those stickers below the RC35 aren't original though.

About the frame: it looks a lot like my old Prestige especially with that re-enforcing collar around the seat tube. That and the rear cable stop too. The crud catcher mounts could have been added by any decent frame builder though.

Click to expand...

i agree about the prestige remark, looks ALOT like my early prestige.

They used the lug-type arrangement for the seat and top tubes up until 1993, so the frame slightly pre-dates the fork. I believe the frame is either a 1992 or 1993, but they're quite hard to tell apart.

I think it's also quite difficult to tell a Clockwork from a Prestige. The rack eyes suggest possibly a Clockwork, but some Prestige had them, some didn't. I did read once that a difference is that most or all Prestige had no chainstay bridge, whereas all Clockworks had one. So if it has no bridge, it's a Prestige, but if it does have one, it could still be either.

Either way, the frame is worth at least £50, and so is the fork, and then there's the rest. Just tell the wife that if all her 'investments' were as profitable as yours, you'd be rich!