- Mountain biking is an individual sport,
and more than anything,
that shows in the bikes we ride.
Customizing your component choice is a start,
but getting a fully custom paint job
is going the full distance,
and it's getting more and more popular.
Some brands even offer it straight from the factory.
So we're out here in beautiful Basque Country
to visit Orbea and see how they do it
on a brand new trail bike, the Orbea Occam.
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So, how do you get a custom painted bike?
Well, Orbea have been offering this service
on some of their models for a few years now.
Shimano invited us inside the Orbea factory
in northern Spain, near Bilbao.
Let's see exactly how they go
from the raw carbon bikes
to that fully finished custom bike.
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Orbea's MyO program has been around
a few years already on road bikes
and on mountain bikes, and this is the brand new Occam.
So, what you do is you get onto the Orbea website,
choose the model of bike you want.
There it is, there's the brand new Occam,
and basically start getting involved
and really customize the bike.
The great thing about this whole MyO process
is it is completely free.
It's all the same price as the standard colored bike.
So start off with colors.
You can choose a gloss or a matte finish.
You can see the difference there. That's the matte one.
Gloss one, super shiny.
Now I'm going to go for the gloss.
At the moment it's fully stealthed out, all black.
Look at all the different color combinations.
It's just a virtually endless cycle.
Metallic Continental Blue.
That looks pretty good.
Secondary color.
So I'll start messing around with that.
You can see down here, it starts to change color.
And you can even look at the different view of the bike.
I reckon that one's going to give me a good view of it.
There you go.
What are you thinking?
I'm thinking red. Nice.
Logos. For the moment they are black.
So if I turn it around there you can see the difference.
That looks pretty good.
Well I think I'm going for white.
Once you're done with colors,
it even then goes into components
so you can start speccing this bike up exactly
as you want it.
I'm going to choose Shimano XT.
From here you can choose your wheels,
your bars, your saddle.
All sorts of different things.
And even then start choosing the ergonomics.
So, how high do you want the bars,
how long do you want the stem.
Pretty crazy though the detail you can go into.
Once you're finished hit that finish button
and your bike is then ordered.
It's going to be custom painted and built,
so let's see how that happens.
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Just walking through the factory seeing this rack of bikes.
See, the bottom here of these are standard colors
and then up here we've got some MyO bikes.
See some of them have little custom bits of text on them.
That ones going to Spain.
This one is one going to Austria.
So I've walked through the factory.
It's really cool to see all those bikes being built.
There's some road bikes, mountain bikes, some secret stuff.
And this is the carbon painting facility.
Check out the colors going on there.
It's like walking into a spaceship.
Let's take a look at the first step
of how these MyO bikes become someone's own bike.
So this is where the MyO process starts.
There is the full carbon Occam,
which I think actually looks pretty cool by itself.
And there it is.
That is the one I designed earlier.
So Laura scanned it with a barcode,
all the colors are there.
This is my personal bike or the bike we're going to build.
And this is the first process
of really masking the frame off,
getting it ready,
putting parts into places
where you don't want the paint to go.
From the first room,
it then passes through some air jets
that are sort of a decontamination process.
It gets rid of anything on the frame
that could get in the way of the paint.
Then it goes in for it's first layer,
which is a primer.
This is done as a base layer to literally prime the frame
for the next layers,
making sure that paints will bond properly.
It also gives a nice base
for the next colors to stand out properly.
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next the frame will go into the oven
to bake and cure the paint.
This is done after each layer is sprayed on.
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And back through the jets after baking too.
This is also done before and
after each of the painting layers,
making absolutely sure there are no contaminates
to get in the way of the paint.
Now the frame is ready for its first color.
Again, the frame is baked and taken
through the cleaning jets.
This is when the masking takes place
to get it ready for the next layer of paint.
This is where the magic really happens,
the different layers of colors really
make the frame design come alive.
It's a surprisingly manual process
with each of the masking outlines
being cut and placed by hand.
And it's further complicated because each model
has it's own specific decals.
It's amazing the workmanship
that goes into each and every frame.
Again the frame passes through the jets
and in for a second color.
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After it's baked for a third time,
it's on to the decals.
These too are done entirely by hand.
The sheets of decals are submerged
in a warm water bath for a while
and then set aside.
One by one,
they're placed onto the frame and squeegeed
to get rid of the bubbles underneath.
Finally, the clear coat is sprayed on.
This one happens to be the gloss finish.
A last bake and it's off to the space-age inspection room.
The lights are particularly strong,
to make sure nothing is hidden on the frame.
So the bikes throughout the procedure.
This is the final check after the clear coat.
This is a road bike, there, for Harry.
These two are mattes, and there it is.
There's the Occam in that gloss finish,
ready for assembly.
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So this is the brand new Orbea Occam in my beautiful colors
with the brand new 2020 Shimano XT bolted up.
So it's a hard hidden trail bike.
It's a twenty-niner.
It's a one forty mil travel front and rear
head angle of sixty-six,
but you can also get this bike with a one-fifty-four.
That's like an eighty to sixty-five and a half.
Seating angle had to be steepened up a bit
to seventy-seven and is longer so it does fit
the category, longer lower, slacker.
It's now a four-fifty mil reach for the medium frame.
I think you definitely see the influences
from the Rallon Enduro bike.
So it's actually an asymmetric frame.
This brace sits off to the side.
I think it looks super cool,
it's a bit like MotoGP in there as well.
Also that might get you the space to fit in a bottle cage.
And of course, bikes are asymmetric anyway.
You've got a rear mech and drive chain on that side.
The size of the bottle actually does offset some
of that weight to the lighter side of the bike.
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well, it looks great, even if I do say so myself,
with that paint job but
it's time to ride it.
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Whoa.
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Well, thank you very much to Shimano and Orbea
for this chance to come out here to Basque country to
design my very own bike in GMD colors and ride it.
It's been lots of fun.
The bike is looking
slightly muddy now, so it needs a good clean to get back
to its shiny gloss finish.
So go and check out the Orbea website.
Check out the MyO, design your own is live now.
Trying to see if Shimano Axles vs XT video,
check out that fat one.
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