It’s a little over a year since I took delivery of my Kona Ph.D., and my aging Orange EVO2 got to put its wheels up in the back of the shed pending a careful rebuild when time and budget allowed. As those of you in the UK will remember, last summer was entirely pup from a weather perspective, and so a long term project like bike building wasn’t at the forefront of GTD thinking for me. It was more appropriate to get the miles in on the PhD. instead 
My first post Christmas ride on the Ph.D. ended up being a bit of a disaster as the rear Mavic Aksium wheel ended up being totalled within a few yards of setting off when the hub suffered a failure that lost one of the flat spokes. All rather annoying – and the wheel’s now in for repair at Tredz in Cardiff, pending a view from Mavic on what went wrong (and hopefully supporting a warranty repair).
So having been back in work for a couple of weeks without the freedom of being able to cycle to and from, I’ve been slowly losing what little sanity I have on the Stagecoach South Wales bus service from the village. It didn’t take long for my better half to take pity on me and say I was allowed to get myself a new thrash about bike for winter riding – leaving the skinny rims of the Ph.D. for better weather.
Through a process of impressive upward management, persuasion and, alright, eventually begging, I managed to get my budget up from the original Kona Cinder Cone level that I was looking at. After a quick scout on Google, I managed to find a 2008 Orange EVO8 reduced in the January sale at Sunset MTB around the corner from my office. How could I resist? I really miss riding the EVO2 – 10 years is a long time to be in the same saddle after all – and so I dropped in to take a look.
Anyway – here’s the lowdown:
Size 19″
Frame 6061-T6 Custom Butted Aluminium
Colour Champagne
Fork Rock Shox Recon Race Air w/Motion Control 100mm
Rear Derailleur Shimano XT Shadow
Front Derailleur Shimano LX
Shifters Shimano LX R Fire +
Crankset Race Face XC Evolve Triple X Type
Cassette SRAM PG950
Brakeset Avid Juicy 3 160/160
Hubs Shimano Deore 475 Disc
Rims Mavic XM117
Spokes WTB S/S Black
Tyres Kenda Nevegal/Blue Groove 2.1
Headset Tange TG8
Stem Orange Stalk +
Seatpost Stick Up
Saddle SDG Bel Air
Handlebars Supercross +
Pedals Shimano SPuDs
The guys at Sunset are typical of a good dealer: Not snotty; not pushy; warmly welcoming, and; good at what they do. They didn’t have a 2008 bike up and running, but put one together for me during the day and swapped out some of the components that weren’t really my bag. All in all, a very good purchasing experience and probably the best I’ve had from an Orange dealer since the good old days when I still had access to Stif’s.
So you can expect some more posts as I get back in the Groove with the daily commute again. Suffice it to say that I’m chuffed to nuts so far <grin>.
Lucky I didn’t see any carbon road bikes…
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Paul lives, rides and works in Cardiff, South Wales. His work seems to largely entail fixing things and keeping wheels on. Officially, he is actively engaged and interested in Enterprise Architecture these days, but has a secret past that involved standing around on glaciers collecting meltwater samples, and walking through endless fields of wheat taking radiance measurements. 