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Many of you simply looked at this bike and made a determination of what you think about it based on its looks and its color scheme. I know this because you've said so. "Ugly," said one in Facebook comments appending to our first look at this bike, and "I really like the looks of this bike," said another. To each his own. If you dig a little there are some interesting and surprising facts about this bike, which I will share.
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Let's talk about fit & sizing.
Orbea is one of the very few companies that understands that bikes need to be designed with stack and reach as inputs. When you do this you get a nicely scaled size run and a predictable fit. As to the bike, how does it fit? Who does it fit?
To me this bike looks taller, fitwise, than it is. A number of bike companies compute stack and reach to the top of the top tube, which is entirely incorrect and misleading. They just don't understand stack and reach and what it is and, honestly, it's late in the game for a bike designer to not understand these metrics. Fortunately Orbea is not one these marginally-equipped companies. It computes stack and reach to the point where the fork steerer exits the frame and enters the stem, as is correct. Just because the top tube extends above this point and meets the stem at stem's top, the bike looks tall. Not so.
Orbea is one of the very few companies that understands that bikes need to be designed with stack and reach as inputs. When you do this you get a nicely scaled size run and a predictable fit. As to the bike, how does it fit? Who does it fit?
To me this bike looks taller, fitwise, than it is. A number of bike companies compute stack and reach to the top of the top tube, which is entirely incorrect and misleading. They just don't understand stack and reach and what it is and, honestly, it's late in the game for a bike designer to not understand these metrics. Fortunately Orbea is not one these marginally-equipped companies. It computes stack and reach to the point where the fork steerer exits the frame and enters the stem, as is correct. Just because the top tube extends above this point and meets the stem at stem's top, the bike looks tall. Not so.
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If you look at my size, for example – which for me would be Orbea's size LG – the reach and stack is 540mm x 430mm. To consider comparable bikes, a Cervelo P3 in size 56cm is 540mm x 425mm, and the new Felt IA just introduced in size L is 537mm x 424mm. A Speed Concept in L is 541mm x 426mm. There seems to be a coalescing around this geometry, but I'm glad for the extra few mms of reach in the Ordu because its head angle is a slightly steepish 73° with a corresponding lack of much fork offset (45mm). This draws the front/center back, but the extra few mms of frame reach normalizes for this. Altogether, a nicely designed bike.
Orbea seems to be doing what Felt is doing with its new IA. There is no 650c bike in the small size, but each company is bending over backwards to make sure the smallest size works for its shorter customers. In the case of the Ordu it correctly adds a lot of fork offset to keep the cockpit a nice tight dimension, while also inoculating against shoe overlap. But the head angle is unchanged in this smaller size, which means the bike is going to lose a lot of trail, and perhaps this will speed the steering up too much. Is that a concern? I don't know. I replaced a 45mm offset fork in my Cervelo R3 with a fork with 53mm offset (the exact thing the Ordu does in its XS, swapping out a 45mm-offset fork with a 53mm fork) because I felt the R3's steering was, for me, too slow as originally built. Adding that new fork made the bike perfect for me, though to be honest the change wasn't massive.
So, I don't know how these new Ordus will steer and handle in that XS size. It might be a pleasant surprise as was the case with my retrofitted R3. Or it might be quick. It's certainly not going to steer like a dog.
Orbea seems to be doing what Felt is doing with its new IA. There is no 650c bike in the small size, but each company is bending over backwards to make sure the smallest size works for its shorter customers. In the case of the Ordu it correctly adds a lot of fork offset to keep the cockpit a nice tight dimension, while also inoculating against shoe overlap. But the head angle is unchanged in this smaller size, which means the bike is going to lose a lot of trail, and perhaps this will speed the steering up too much. Is that a concern? I don't know. I replaced a 45mm offset fork in my Cervelo R3 with a fork with 53mm offset (the exact thing the Ordu does in its XS, swapping out a 45mm-offset fork with a 53mm fork) because I felt the R3's steering was, for me, too slow as originally built. Adding that new fork made the bike perfect for me, though to be honest the change wasn't massive.
So, I don't know how these new Ordus will steer and handle in that XS size. It might be a pleasant surprise as was the case with my retrofitted R3. Or it might be quick. It's certainly not going to steer like a dog.
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The other change Orbea made to this smallest size Ordu was raise the bottom bracket, from 72mm of drop to 60mm. The net result is a bike with a lower stack. It's got a stack of 465mm and that's low. A couple of weeks ago I spoke favorably of Felt's new IA in this size, with a reach and stack of 467mm and 380mm. I wrote that it's got the lowest stack by far of any 700c bike. Obviously I wrote too soon. The new Ordu in size XS is 465mm and 370mm, and adding that extra fork offset is how Orbea was able to hog an extra 10mm off the reach of that bike without running into shoe overlap trouble.
One more thing on fit, and this is critical. One reader wrote of this new bike, "Spacers to increase stack will ruin the looks of this," and that would be true if that's how you raised the pads. But that's not how we do it these days. We never put headset spacers in these bikes. Ever. If you can't do it by pedestalling the pads, you get the next size up. If that makes the bike too long, you look to a different geometry. If none of that works, you look to a different bike fitter.
We pedestal the pads and extensions, but it's critical that the pads and extensions be raised as a unit. This the case, it worried me that I saw that this bike was spec'd with the Vision Trimax Carbon. Vision Tech has been the last holdout when it comes to front-line aerobar companies. It's the one company that hasn't made a bar until very recently where the pads and extensions pedestal as a unit.
One more thing on fit, and this is critical. One reader wrote of this new bike, "Spacers to increase stack will ruin the looks of this," and that would be true if that's how you raised the pads. But that's not how we do it these days. We never put headset spacers in these bikes. Ever. If you can't do it by pedestalling the pads, you get the next size up. If that makes the bike too long, you look to a different geometry. If none of that works, you look to a different bike fitter.
We pedestal the pads and extensions, but it's critical that the pads and extensions be raised as a unit. This the case, it worried me that I saw that this bike was spec'd with the Vision Trimax Carbon. Vision Tech has been the last holdout when it comes to front-line aerobar companies. It's the one company that hasn't made a bar until very recently where the pads and extensions pedestal as a unit.
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Vision makes 6 aerobars, and only 1 pedestals this way, and it's a fully integrated bar (pursuit bar and aerobar is one unit). This did not appear to be the bar spec'd on this bike. So I went back and asked both Vision and Orbea and, after some checking, they confirmed that this bar is of the new style. In fact, Vision sent me mechanical drawings of this bar (above), showing how it pedestals.
Orbea did not spec the wrong bar on its tri bike the way Cannondale did with its current Slice. To the best of my knowledge Cannondale is still spec'ing what appears to be, from stock product photos, the old version of the Vision Tech Trimax Clip-on (carbon or aluminum depending on the model). If so, this is just a blunder, especially because Vision Tech migrated to this new way of pedestalling its pads when it made a special bar just for the Slice RS. Who at Cannondale forgot that it required Vision to change the way its bars pedestalled when spec'ing a Vision bar on the Slice RS? How can you require a change in how the bars work on the RS, but then forget that you required this when spec'ing the newer Slice?
Orbea did not spec the wrong bar on its tri bike the way Cannondale did with its current Slice. To the best of my knowledge Cannondale is still spec'ing what appears to be, from stock product photos, the old version of the Vision Tech Trimax Clip-on (carbon or aluminum depending on the model). If so, this is just a blunder, especially because Vision Tech migrated to this new way of pedestalling its pads when it made a special bar just for the Slice RS. Who at Cannondale forgot that it required Vision to change the way its bars pedestalled when spec'ing a Vision bar on the Slice RS? How can you require a change in how the bars work on the RS, but then forget that you required this when spec'ing the newer Slice?
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My one regret is that this Vision bar as spec'd on the Ordu isn't spec'd with the same Wrist Relief style extension that Starky rode in Roth, when he crushed the bike legs at Roth and then at Racine 70.3. This is a brand new extension shape for Vision, but it really needs to be on this bar and I think it is the best choice for this bike.
Where is the value point? Let's look at the Ordu for the American market at the $4,299 price. It's a mechanically-shifted Ultegra 6800 bike, with a lot of FSA and Vision on it because it's apparent that these two companies – Vision/FSA and Orbea – have a tight relationship. Team Cofidis (Nacer Bouhanni, et al) are sponsored by both Vision and Orbea. This model of the Ordu (M20 LTD) can be had, says Trent Nix of Tri Shop in Plano, TX, for $5,500 with Di2. I find that intriguing. Trent is one of the guys I talk to when determining what's selling at retail.
How would you hop this bike up? Di2 would do it. Otherwise...
I find it interesting that Felt and Orbea have each produced bikes that, to me, are thematically similar. Each bike – and in this case I'm talking about the new, more affordable IA and the mid-priced Ordu – badly want a center pull brake. In Orbea's case they just spec'd a TriRig brake on their upper-end models. Some readers criticized this ("exposed cables, exposed brakes"), but I haven't seen any data suggesting that a hidden or faired or integrated front or rear center-pull brake and cable is better than an exposed center pull cable on a Magura or TriRig brake. Indeed, I pressed Felt on this: What's more aero, a TriRig on the new IA or the fork-integrated brake on the flagship IA? My takeaway was that spending a shipload of money just for an integrated brake might not buy you any aero advantage.
Orbea champions the idea that moving the fork blades way away from the front wheel is more aerodynamic. We adopted this at Quintana Roo in the early 90s. We had Kinesis make us a fork (the Illuminero, then the Carbonaero) based on this theory. I came across this in 1990 or thereabouts at the wind tunnel at Texas A&M. John Cobb and Steve Hed were running tests, and the two best-performing forks that day were a cheap, very heavy, solid-blade Schwinn fork out of the Ashtabula factory (not designed to be an aero fork), and a strange-looking fork made by Seattle-based frame maker Dan Wynn. Wynn's fork was square, that is, its crown was very wide, and the blades were straight up and down. They were spaced 100mm not only at the dropout, but at the crown.
Felt has played with this idea and its more expensive IA is based on this. Felt did what we did at Quintana Roo, which was to pair this with wheels that were very narrow. We had Hed build us wheels with flanges spaced 60mm apart rather than the typical 80mm. Pardon the digression, but these QR bikes from the early 90s, with 90mm Hed wheels around narrow-flanged hubs were, I suspect, extremely aerodynamic, even by today's standards. In my opinion the industry has well surpassed what we were doing in terms of frame aerodynamics but is still leaving a lot on the table when it comes to how wheels, forks and frames integrate with each other.
The theory here is that you push the fork blades right up against the wheel, making one integrated unit as far as the wind is concerned (Schwinn's Ashtabula fork, or the Hooker Elite). If you can't do that, you skinny the wheel and push the blades away from it, so that the wind treats the wheel and each blade as three discrete objects. This is what Orbea is doing.
Where is the value point? Let's look at the Ordu for the American market at the $4,299 price. It's a mechanically-shifted Ultegra 6800 bike, with a lot of FSA and Vision on it because it's apparent that these two companies – Vision/FSA and Orbea – have a tight relationship. Team Cofidis (Nacer Bouhanni, et al) are sponsored by both Vision and Orbea. This model of the Ordu (M20 LTD) can be had, says Trent Nix of Tri Shop in Plano, TX, for $5,500 with Di2. I find that intriguing. Trent is one of the guys I talk to when determining what's selling at retail.
How would you hop this bike up? Di2 would do it. Otherwise...
I find it interesting that Felt and Orbea have each produced bikes that, to me, are thematically similar. Each bike – and in this case I'm talking about the new, more affordable IA and the mid-priced Ordu – badly want a center pull brake. In Orbea's case they just spec'd a TriRig brake on their upper-end models. Some readers criticized this ("exposed cables, exposed brakes"), but I haven't seen any data suggesting that a hidden or faired or integrated front or rear center-pull brake and cable is better than an exposed center pull cable on a Magura or TriRig brake. Indeed, I pressed Felt on this: What's more aero, a TriRig on the new IA or the fork-integrated brake on the flagship IA? My takeaway was that spending a shipload of money just for an integrated brake might not buy you any aero advantage.
Orbea champions the idea that moving the fork blades way away from the front wheel is more aerodynamic. We adopted this at Quintana Roo in the early 90s. We had Kinesis make us a fork (the Illuminero, then the Carbonaero) based on this theory. I came across this in 1990 or thereabouts at the wind tunnel at Texas A&M. John Cobb and Steve Hed were running tests, and the two best-performing forks that day were a cheap, very heavy, solid-blade Schwinn fork out of the Ashtabula factory (not designed to be an aero fork), and a strange-looking fork made by Seattle-based frame maker Dan Wynn. Wynn's fork was square, that is, its crown was very wide, and the blades were straight up and down. They were spaced 100mm not only at the dropout, but at the crown.
Felt has played with this idea and its more expensive IA is based on this. Felt did what we did at Quintana Roo, which was to pair this with wheels that were very narrow. We had Hed build us wheels with flanges spaced 60mm apart rather than the typical 80mm. Pardon the digression, but these QR bikes from the early 90s, with 90mm Hed wheels around narrow-flanged hubs were, I suspect, extremely aerodynamic, even by today's standards. In my opinion the industry has well surpassed what we were doing in terms of frame aerodynamics but is still leaving a lot on the table when it comes to how wheels, forks and frames integrate with each other.
The theory here is that you push the fork blades right up against the wheel, making one integrated unit as far as the wind is concerned (Schwinn's Ashtabula fork, or the Hooker Elite). If you can't do that, you skinny the wheel and push the blades away from it, so that the wind treats the wheel and each blade as three discrete objects. This is what Orbea is doing.
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