Another project looms!! DH orientated!! update!! 13/08/12

nice jon , i love that colour

yeah i decided to go for this colour as i also have the ST4 in neon green so i thought they'd be a cool pair together, that little corner of the garage is really bright! as much as i love it though i almost wish i had waited a bit though as Orange started doing the super bright flouro orange not long after i had it done, maybe next time!

also, another little bonus was i said it felt a little weird to ride, well i emailed Orange to ask a couple of questions, turns out there were 2 sliders for the shock mount, something i didn't know, i thought the slider just moved to accommodate the shorter shock length, so thanks to Ben at Orange (those from the OWMTBC10 will remember him) i now have the correct slider on the bike aswel.

thought i'd update this thread.

this bike has been a revelation, since i did the conversion to a trail bike i have used this bike so much more, for Morzine a few weeks ago it went back to being a downhill bike but since re-speccing the clockwork for winter duties i decided to tweak this with some shiny parts

xtr mech and shifters, hope on xc717 wheels, dues chainset, a new unripped saddle and of course back to being a trail bike

this is a great bike. if you want a do it all bike, these patriot 66 frames can really do it.

Love that colour...it looks a lot more interesting than the black, although at the time these came out colour was considered bad...I remember stripping the decals off my 888's to make my Demo 9 as black as possible!

I had one of these a couple of years ago when I tried to merge my DH bike and trail bike into one. Unfortunately I never clicked with it, don't know why as I loved the idea of it and it got good reviews. It's weird because I love Orange hardtail but don't get on with their bouncy bikes I have absolutely no idea why though.

Love your bike and I love the idea of being able to switch. Do you have any idea which Orange frames will be able to do this (in terms of geometry)? Obviously the Patriot 66, which have been around from 2005 orso?, but how about the older patriots? Or was the 66 the only frame with adjustable rear shock mount?

2004 patriot had 5 and 6 inch mounts andi i think the late 222's had the adjustable shock as seen here and possibly the patriot 7+ but i suspect with both of those you will be messing with the geo too much as they are essentially dh bikes.

I thought so too, I would prefer a similar setup to Jonnyboys, so going from 5" all mountain style to 6" or 7".

222, 223, 224 all had adjustable shock shuttles, but like cyfa said, they're downhill bikes, not advisable to try and pedal them!
Orange did the patriot 66 from 2006-2007, 2006 was 6" travel, 2007 was 7" travel i believe, both with adjustable shock shuttles, then the tubing changed a little and was just called the patriot in 2008, still with 7" travel and adjustable shock shuttle. All nice bikes, (I owned a 2008 one) but a wee bit big for XC really I'd have said. I used mine as a downhill bike.

here's my old 2008 patriot for anyone that was interested



Sorry for hijacking the thread

No problem, thanks for showing actually. It is sometimes difficult to see or know the differences between the Orange models, let alone between years. The website has no archive, so comparing on these details is not always easy.

hey Senri,

the 66 is definitely the best frame for swapping shocks etc as they designed it specifically to do this, note that the front shock mount plate is different for each shock though to cope with the different eye to eye on the shocks. initially i used the rp23 with the original mounting plate from the longer coil shock just moved back and it didn't feel right, a quick email to Orange and they sorted me out the correct mount which made a huge difference.

i also like the look of this one, it's not too beefed up that it looks overkill for the trail centres but is still beefy enough when built for downhill.

also regarding catalogue history, the guys at Orange told me that with the timeline feature on facebook they are going to try and upload model pictures in the correct order going back as far as possible but it's a time consuming for them.