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After the Marin (see here) had broken for the umpteenth time, and Edinburgh Bikes had decided they didn't want to honour the warranty because I'd raced it, we jumped ship from them. Marin at the time didn't care whether you'd raced DH on their DH bike, but for some reason Edi Bikes did. As a result, the thousands we spent on bikes every year went elsewhere. Luckily my dad was working not far from Sandy Wallace at the time, and had already bought quite a bit from him including some early Pace RC36's for his Cannondale. We'd already got some Boxxers from him to replace the god-awful Pace Monstors I'd broken repeatedly and as the topic of broken bikes came up Sandy said 'bring it over here, I'll sort it'. Not long after that Marin turned round and said they had one frame left, and they didn't really want to give it to me as I'd probably break that too, so they offered a full refund on the frame. Pretty good going after riding the hell out of it/them for 18 months. But what to replace it with? We'd originally thought of a Patriot as a stronger and better version of the DH Team but by this point the 222 was talk of the town as a significant upgrade on the outgoing Mr.O, and a better DH only bike than the Patriot. Handily too, as Sandy was good friends with Lester and Steve, he knew he could get one as soon as the welds had cooled and the paint had dried, and as I was now on his team he was keen to have me on one of the latest bikes. Of course he would be, he wasn't paying for it! Between the Marin breaking and the 222 turning up he even convinced Orange to lend me a Patriot LT with Manitou X-Vert DCs and such to do a few races on which seemed pretty decent to a 15 year old!
Me at the final race of the season, SDA Ae Forest 2001. I soon learned to flatten my brake levers off more than this. For those of you who still follow the modern day sport, or Pinkbike, the man to the right is Alan Cathro, who was instrumental to the running of the SDA races at the time, and father of Ben Cathro (who raced World Cup DH for many years, including on Oranges himself, before presenting PB's World Cup videos).
As it happened I got the 222 in the October a week after the delayed (due to foot and mouth) last race of the season had taken place at Laggan, now site of Wolftrax, and it was picked up from the factory alongside a prototype Sub-3 with horizontal rear dropouts. I can still remember jumping on it the first time and riding it around Inverkeithing high street while kicking it off steps and such. All but a handful of parts had been transferred over from the Marin so it was pretty familiar, aside from the significant extra rear travel! Man was I happy that day.
Me about to cross under Tower 13 on the Nevis Range at a National in 2002 (I was running Hayes brakes that year)
A brief history of the 222:
At the time, Animal were purveyors of trendy surf clothing, and were sponsoring the Orange factory team with the likes of Tim Ponting, the Kitchins, Jo Leigh and some random called Greg Minnaar. For UK stuff they had the Patriot (custom team version with 12mm rear end) and the Mr.O for big stuff in Europe, but which was a bit soggy for most British tracks with Fort William and Rheola not yet in the picture. Anyway, the 222 was developed out of the Patriot architecture during 2000 with the first production models available at the tail end of that year. The shock was lengthened from 2" stroke on the Mr.O to use the latest spec 222mm eye to eye with a 2.75" stroke to give approx 215mm travel. Less adjustability than the outgoing model in travel, but with easily adjustable head angle and bottom bracket height using the different front shuttle mountings. Production spec bikes lost the twin mounting points on the front shuttle and had a redesigned swingarm with specific dropouts that were larger than the protos which had the old Patriot 12mm ones which were shallower.
The Patriot the 222 evolved from
Me, Innerleithen 2002 SDA
There were quite a few iterations of the 222 as being made in Yorskhire it was easy to make running changes. The first ones had a screw in axle with the driveside dropout being threaded. The shuttle was silver, and the main pivot bolt covers were tapered. The shuttle track was entirely mounted on the downtube. The first batch of 25 were made in Team Animal replica colours, which is what I had. The very first ones missed the small union jack '222' decals on the swingarm and the Orange wings logo behind the head tube. These earlier bikes were all built with Rock Shox Pro Deluxe shocks, a significant improvement on the Super Deluxe but still not really a match for the Fox Vanilla RC. If anyone has a Pro Deluxe sitting around though I'll glady swap the Fox from this frame for it! The shuttle on these bikes was also silver while the later ones were anodised black.
The 2001 catalogue build
And then Minnaar signed for the new Global team who were also using the 222 for 2001. That first year they were using production frames, albeit with a floating brake arm that was trendy at the time, and which became an option on the 2002 spec frames along with a Global team replica colourway in the same vein as those early Animal ones. These floating brake arm bikes also changed to an axle which bolted in from either side and then had pinch bolts to hold it tight. The pivot covers became flat rather than tapered, and later bikes had a shock track which extended up into the top tube as some had been known to crack. The 223 then arrived and brought with it a 150mm rear end.
The last of the 222's before the 223 appeared, in early 2003 spec with brake arm and reinforced shock shuttle track
Back to the bike of the thread:
At the time it was built up with some solid parts; Hope Bigun wheels with Sun Doublewides, Hope Pro DH4 brakes and XTR stuff. Pretty nice really, along with the correct era of bright red 2000 Boxxers, the first of the 7" ones, to match the Animal decals. For this build I got some decals from Filip Badura which are close but not quite right as they were based on the Global ones which is a minor grumble and something I didn’t spot until I compared them to one of the old ones I had left, it's got the wrong shock, and I don't have any Biguns any more. I do however still have a 5 bolt Bulb which was used on it when I broke the disc tab off a Bigun and was waiting for warranty. This ended up on my Trek 950 but I've got some Ti Glides for that now so the blue Bulb will be coming to the 222. I've still got the 24Seven cranks I had on it at one point, an X-Lite stem, Clikon post and my original PSS1 red kevlar saddle. I've still got the original Pro levers too and some NOS DH4 calipers (mine got changed for Enduro 4's eventually, and then Hayes Mags which were far superior). Original seat QR too. I'll see if I can get an early FSA Pig headset with the pig head logo. They were terrible but it's what I had on it originally so it'll match the theme. I've also still got the original MRP but that's currently in use on the M1 but I do have another 4 bolt one so I'll get a 4 bolt spider for the cranks and use that, it's close enough.
What I started with
How it's going
Me at the final race of the season, SDA Ae Forest 2001. I soon learned to flatten my brake levers off more than this. For those of you who still follow the modern day sport, or Pinkbike, the man to the right is Alan Cathro, who was instrumental to the running of the SDA races at the time, and father of Ben Cathro (who raced World Cup DH for many years, including on Oranges himself, before presenting PB's World Cup videos).
As it happened I got the 222 in the October a week after the delayed (due to foot and mouth) last race of the season had taken place at Laggan, now site of Wolftrax, and it was picked up from the factory alongside a prototype Sub-3 with horizontal rear dropouts. I can still remember jumping on it the first time and riding it around Inverkeithing high street while kicking it off steps and such. All but a handful of parts had been transferred over from the Marin so it was pretty familiar, aside from the significant extra rear travel! Man was I happy that day.
Me about to cross under Tower 13 on the Nevis Range at a National in 2002 (I was running Hayes brakes that year)
A brief history of the 222:
At the time, Animal were purveyors of trendy surf clothing, and were sponsoring the Orange factory team with the likes of Tim Ponting, the Kitchins, Jo Leigh and some random called Greg Minnaar. For UK stuff they had the Patriot (custom team version with 12mm rear end) and the Mr.O for big stuff in Europe, but which was a bit soggy for most British tracks with Fort William and Rheola not yet in the picture. Anyway, the 222 was developed out of the Patriot architecture during 2000 with the first production models available at the tail end of that year. The shock was lengthened from 2" stroke on the Mr.O to use the latest spec 222mm eye to eye with a 2.75" stroke to give approx 215mm travel. Less adjustability than the outgoing model in travel, but with easily adjustable head angle and bottom bracket height using the different front shuttle mountings. Production spec bikes lost the twin mounting points on the front shuttle and had a redesigned swingarm with specific dropouts that were larger than the protos which had the old Patriot 12mm ones which were shallower.
The Patriot the 222 evolved from
Me, Innerleithen 2002 SDA
There were quite a few iterations of the 222 as being made in Yorskhire it was easy to make running changes. The first ones had a screw in axle with the driveside dropout being threaded. The shuttle was silver, and the main pivot bolt covers were tapered. The shuttle track was entirely mounted on the downtube. The first batch of 25 were made in Team Animal replica colours, which is what I had. The very first ones missed the small union jack '222' decals on the swingarm and the Orange wings logo behind the head tube. These earlier bikes were all built with Rock Shox Pro Deluxe shocks, a significant improvement on the Super Deluxe but still not really a match for the Fox Vanilla RC. If anyone has a Pro Deluxe sitting around though I'll glady swap the Fox from this frame for it! The shuttle on these bikes was also silver while the later ones were anodised black.
The 2001 catalogue build
And then Minnaar signed for the new Global team who were also using the 222 for 2001. That first year they were using production frames, albeit with a floating brake arm that was trendy at the time, and which became an option on the 2002 spec frames along with a Global team replica colourway in the same vein as those early Animal ones. These floating brake arm bikes also changed to an axle which bolted in from either side and then had pinch bolts to hold it tight. The pivot covers became flat rather than tapered, and later bikes had a shock track which extended up into the top tube as some had been known to crack. The 223 then arrived and brought with it a 150mm rear end.
The last of the 222's before the 223 appeared, in early 2003 spec with brake arm and reinforced shock shuttle track
Back to the bike of the thread:
At the time it was built up with some solid parts; Hope Bigun wheels with Sun Doublewides, Hope Pro DH4 brakes and XTR stuff. Pretty nice really, along with the correct era of bright red 2000 Boxxers, the first of the 7" ones, to match the Animal decals. For this build I got some decals from Filip Badura which are close but not quite right as they were based on the Global ones which is a minor grumble and something I didn’t spot until I compared them to one of the old ones I had left, it's got the wrong shock, and I don't have any Biguns any more. I do however still have a 5 bolt Bulb which was used on it when I broke the disc tab off a Bigun and was waiting for warranty. This ended up on my Trek 950 but I've got some Ti Glides for that now so the blue Bulb will be coming to the 222. I've still got the 24Seven cranks I had on it at one point, an X-Lite stem, Clikon post and my original PSS1 red kevlar saddle. I've still got the original Pro levers too and some NOS DH4 calipers (mine got changed for Enduro 4's eventually, and then Hayes Mags which were far superior). Original seat QR too. I'll see if I can get an early FSA Pig headset with the pig head logo. They were terrible but it's what I had on it originally so it'll match the theme. I've also still got the original MRP but that's currently in use on the M1 but I do have another 4 bolt one so I'll get a 4 bolt spider for the cranks and use that, it's close enough.
What I started with
How it's going
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