Stark VARG

[phoo]

Its good you were able to roll a 20 when you needed to.

Standing in JT Motorsports, wearing my "R&T, Sponsored by JT Motorsports" hoodie that I just happened to be wearing that day probably gave me a huge bonus to my stats. :-P


~Patrick

[smdub]

Phoo, Awesome you got to ride one on real trails!

Your images aren't showing up for me :(

The 20hp no wheelie thing - its weird in that the LightBee, UltraBee, and KTM-Es all make <20hp and will put you on your back when you twist the grip. I still hope they allow some more customization of torque and throttle response in the modes. Your software may be newer than the one I rode too? I know they rolled out an update a few weeks ago but won't say exactly what they changed. Great to hear it can hop logs easily. There were none of those @ Hyser (though I was eyeballing a small car wondering if I could ride over it.)

Interesting you said the rear brake kills the power? I was dragging it doing really tight balancing turns and it didn't turn off on me. Others have commented in a whiskey throttle event the rear brake can't stop the motor. Again, wonder if they've changed something. FWIW, I disabled the LightBee rear brake turning off the motor. I left the front brake disable on.

Yeah, I laid the Varg over too. She is indeed a big girl. It may be 20#+ more then the KTM-E but its higher up or something. Maybe because the battery is taller? I couldn't figure it out - they shouldn't be too different other than the total.

Bigger battery on the Arctic Leopard is +$500. Starting price is $11k so 11.5k w/ the batt. 30# is still a pretty big difference esp when you add real tubes, footpegs, etc to the Varg. Sounds like the difference mainly comes down to air vs water cooled. Agreed, their official site sucks. Try their US site:
https://arctic-leopard-usa.com/enduro/

I finally got time and figured out how to take the ultrabee fork apart this week. No one has said how to do it yet online so I was on my own. I ported the compression valve path in the base valve a little and removed one of the high speed shims above the crossover shim and opened up the cartridge lower bypass holes in case they were cavitating. We will see... I have to guess what weight oil to put back in it. I also have a backup plan arriving this weekend too.

[phoo]

"Interesting you said the rear brake kills the power?" I was unclear. I meant my habit is to cut the throttle and pull in the (non-existent on a Stark) clutch.

Interesting on the price of the battery. I was going by what they said in the video, but that site is clearly $500 for the bigger battery, then $200 for the electronic clutch, putting the total price at $11700 which is $400 less than the initial price of the Stark Varg (what I have) and probably $1k less than a comparably equipped Varg (they've since upcharged things like the kickstand, rear brake foot pedal (rear hand brake is standard), and added $800 to the base model).

It's exciting the number of new options coming out now.


~Patrick

[smdub]

Tucker @ ECR gets first ride of the Flux Primo. Its still at least 2yrs away though :(

[Twist]

https://advrider.com/f/threads/brand-ne ... t-49895037

[phoo]

I locked in $12k for mine, shipping included. :)

Saw a post of someone who tried to do an enduro on a Stark Varg, riding B40 class. He made it 62 miles before he ran out of juice and unfortunately didn't finish, but that's at a B pace, so that's still pretty awesome. He did charge during the gas lunch stop, which I've heard depending on your generator is about 1% charge per minute of charging, so I figure he regained 30-45% charge during that time. I don't know the settings he used but I know I don't need the full 60HP to achieve "my normal results (fwiw)" in a race.

Having to keep waiting for the part for my Beta has me thinking hard about buying another bike. Maybe I'll just get the Varg shipped to another state, rather than buying another 300 2T. Theoretically, my part will come eventually and I don't need to have *three* dirtbikes.


~Patrick

[smdub]

Saw a post of someone who tried to do an enduro on a Stark Varg, riding B40 class. He made it 62 miles before he ran out of juice and unfortunately didn't finish, but that's at a B pace, so that's still pretty awesome. He did charge during the gas lunch stop, which I've heard depending on your generator is about 1% charge per minute of charging, so I figure he regained 30-45% charge during that time. I don't know the settings he used but I know I don't need the full 60HP to achieve "my normal results (fwiw)" in a race.

There was a fellow who just posted about doing an enduro on ADVRider in 30hp mode.
https://advrider.com/f/threads/stark-va ... t-50146557
27mi to 20% remaining. So that would be about 34mi 'full tank'. He also charged some after that during lunch stop but had some problems w/ his generator (he should have lowered the charge rate on the Varg.) He didn't make the 4th section and had to abandon the bike in the woods and get a SXS to take him back to the truck.

FWIW, the Varg charger is 3300W max. I took a pic of the data plate during my test ride.
https://evshop.eu/en/chargers/503-evpt2 ... v-10a.html
W/ a 6.5kWh batt thats a 2hr charge. Since the last 20% is slower when the cell voltages max out, in reality its longer. But for the first 80% its about right. So that would be about 0.8% per minute. The charger is also limited to 10A out. So you get less power charging below about 2/3 charge. So if run down you will be limited to only a little over 2kW at the start which will limit you to 0.5%/min. In reality if you ran it down to 10-20% it probably takes 3hrs to fully charge to 100%. That math seems reasonable given the charger size vs batt capacity of other bikes.

[Bucho]

Am I hearing 30+ miles of real trail riding? Thats pretty good for most people’s needs.

50+ would be better but it sounds like we’ll get there sooner or later

[smdub]

Am I hearing 30+ miles of real trail riding? Thats pretty good for most people’s needs.

50+ would be better but it sounds like we’ll get there sooner or later

Yes, people have been getting mid-30s of real riding on the Varg which makes sense based on the battery size. Terrain makes a big difference to range but it effects them all equally. You can eek more out of any of them in lower modes but what fun is it to ride slow? Its like driving a Ferrari like a Prius.

[phoo]

All I'm gonna say is I was hauling ass at 30HP, and with no gas engine making a racket, all you could hear was the tires gripping the terrain, the chain whirring, and me giggling like a loon. It was amazing.


~Patrick