Stark VARG

[phoo]

Talaria Dragon is interesting, though the Varg's battery is 25% bigger and 242# instead of 220# isn't exactly "too heavy." My two stroke weighs 275# when fully loaded. It's all about how it carries its weight while riding, which we all know.

What are the "shitty plastic tubes" you're talking about?

And the "cold storage issues?" If you're referring to not keeping it in an unheated garage in winter, they were very upfront about that at the beginning. I was going to use the Varg as the excuse to finally heat and AC my garage. ;)

There was another electric dirtbike I saw recently that looked pretty good. I'll have to see if I can find the name. It was about half the price of a Varg and looked pretty good. But I think that option was leaning more toward "just wanting an electric dirtbike" than "an actual possible replacement for my 2T in many of my riding scenarios." I need to remind myself that I'm not really interested in the former; I'm more looking for a second/newer bike and if that bike happens to be electric, fantastic. Otherwise, team blue and white is looking pretty attractive these days.


Thanks,

~Patrick

[Rut Row]

JTs is a Stark dealer. Maybe he can help in some way.

[phoo]

Yeah. Hopefully that means they have a demo bike on the floor so I can observe some of this "premium fit and finish" in person before I drop a lotta dosh on my own.


~Patrick

[smdub]

Talaria Dragon is interesting, though the Varg's battery is 25% bigger and 242# instead of 220# isn't exactly "too heavy." My two stroke weighs 275# when fully loaded. It's all about how it carries its weight while riding, which we all know.

What are the "shitty plastic tubes" you're talking about?

And the "cold storage issues?" If you're referring to not keeping it in an unheated garage in winter, they were very upfront about that at the beginning. I was going to use the Varg as the excuse to finally heat and AC my garage. ;)

242#? Uhhhh, that number NEVER happened. The real numer is ~265#. Verified from just about everyone who has received their bikes. Stark never got even close to their initial weight estimate. Its about 5# lighter than the Alta, but if you put the same tubes* and gear on it they are about the same. So all that work and waiting for the same weight and just 10% more battery/range? This is all before adding in little stuff like bark busters, bar risers, dampers, real tires, tubes, etc. "Fully loaded" will be quite a bit more.

*Stark is using ultra-lightweight thin polyurethane(?) plastic tubes like some mountain bike racers now use to save weight. Never used in motorcycles before. Users are all reporting them to be very fragile and you should just replace them.


I had not heard of the cold storage issue. You can't charge lithiums below freezing but they are typically very tolerant of being stored cold. Here is the datasheet for a Molcell 21700 that a lot of high performance e-moto packs use.
https://www.imrbatteries.com/content/molicel_p42a.pdf
You can see they even allow *USE* (discharge) all the way down to -40C. Lithium batteries fundamentally don't have a problem stored cold. In fact, they quite like it. Their lifetime only suffers when stored hot. No other electric car or motorcycle has such storage limitations. I have no idea what Stark did but it must be how they are packaged or something. Per the FAQ they don't even recommend storing below 10C(50F). WTF is that? That is going to be the HIGH temp tomorrow for the WATR Fall Trail Ride. This is a serious design problem IMO.

While the Varg's battery is 20% bigger than the Talaria Dragon it is neither easily swappable nor the range king. I now have multiple batteries for the KTM E. At places like Mountain Ridge, Kairos, etc I can ride farther than the Varg. I can darn near ride all day if I charge one while riding the other (I didn't do this last time at MR.) The Varg's single battery would indeed go father at a place like Hatfield McCoy where you are looping much farther from the parking lot. But I don't think the Varg has enough additional range to ride there anyway. There are already aftermarket batteries for the Ultra Bee that go considerably farther than the Varg (ECR back to back testing.) The Varg lost the range title before it even shipped in quantity. The Varg (and KTM E, and Alta) use such a proprietary battery config that the aftermarket lilely will never support it. The China-bikes get support and aftermarket packs almost concurrent with release. And the UB batts swaps are also fast (and tool less). I don't know for sure but I'd bet the Talaria Dragon battery is very similar given how the Talaria Sting is.

[smdub]

Phoo, our ride at Mountain Ridge this summer I did not charge my spare battery while riding the other. I just brought two charged KTM batts thinking I wouldn't ride anywhere close to 40-50mi that day. We rode WAY more than I expected. I think I ran one half way down, swapped to the spare at lunch and ran that half down, then SJ and mini-SJ and I decided to go out for more. I had *NO* idea how long they'd ride and didn't trust the remaining ~12mi in the KTM. So I took the UB which still had some charge left in it. That was my planning mistake. I need to be prepared for anything when you guys are there

FWIW, its not good for Li batts to be left at full charge. They are best stored at 50-80%. So I typ plan to have them at that level (or lower) at the end of the day. The KTM charger will not discharge a battery down to the storage level. AFAIK, the Varg won't do it either. So I was trying to not end the day w/ the spare battery 100% full on the charger and it bit me in the ass.

Range anxiety is a real thing. I've run the KTM E out at Rockhouse down at Hatfield. I had to bypass one or two trails at the end and I *STILL* had to bail out to the other parking lot while the guys rode back to get my van and pick me up. It sucked. (This was all agreed on when I hit bingo fuel. I was ready to turn around and leave them but they said they'd pick me up so we all kept going.} I was really close to having to push it out of the woods. The extra 10mi of the Varg MIGHT have made it. I sure would have felt better if I had it! But it still wouldn't handle a day at Buffalo Mtn / Devil Anse. This spring we were doing 40-50mi days there. I brought the KTM 150 along for that.

[smdub]

There was a Varg at the WATR Fall Trail Ride yesterday. Turns out it was a dealer from Richmond and he'd had it for a couple weeks.

An interesting thing to note: as folks were test riding it, they'd come back and the 'gas gauge' would slowly go up as it sat there. Wonder if that means Stark is basing the % remaining off the voltage which would go up after stopping riding. I don't see how it would do this if they were doing coulomb counting (directly measuring the Ah removed as you use it.)

[phoo]

That's neat. Glad you got to see one being used "in the wild." I've seen some "range" videos that looked promising.


~Patrick

[phoo]

FWIW, this was in the document from Stark --

"7. DO I NEED TO PAY THE DEALER TO BUILD MY BIKE?
No, all costs associated with building your bike and handing
it over to you are included in the purchase price."

I don't know how that interacts with what some other people are saying, or if that part is new, or if people were confused about having to pay taxes.


~Patrick

[phoo]

So, the plot sickens...

Varg is currently unable to deliver to a handful of states due to local regulations and of course Maryland is one of those states. However, they are willing and able to change the designated dealer for pickup because of this. JT's has a couple demo bikes but apparently they aren't actually able to fulfill orders and that's why they still haven't contacted me.

It's getting tough. Every single person who's gotten one has been absolutely enamored with them, but this is being a major pita.


Thanks,

~Patrick

[smdub]

Yeah, I can't figure out if WV or VA are in the same boat. Stark won't give any details. I could easily change my order to ship somewhere else. My buddies would gladly take receipt of a bike for me.