Outside warranty window

[Foss]

Pretty simple question, has anyone made claims outside the window and has stark made accommodations? Curious if some of the gen1 folks making claims knowing they are outside the window.

 

[UKLee]

Pretty simple question, has anyone made claims outside the window and has stark made accommodations? Curious if some of the gen1 folks making claims knowing they are outside the window.

I assume you are talking time wise? 2 year warranty so no one will be out of warranty yet.
I see loads of batteries and drive trains still going down including the gen 2 so not done a very good job of fixing the issues (my replacement has started getting noisy but no reply from stark) I asked stark if it is 2 years from the bike being new or 2 years for a part that has been replaced, they replied 2 years from the bike being new so in other words they just keep sending us parts that will fail again.

The rust in the frame tapers will be an issue eventully it will fail but maybe not before the 2 years is up and that is all stark care about because big profit in selling spare parts compared to the price of the bike.

 

[Aleksandar13]

I assume you are talking time wise? 2 year warranty so no one will be out of warranty yet.
I see loads of batteries and drive trains still going down including the gen 2 so not done a very good job of fixing the issues (my replacement has started getting noisy but no reply from stark) I asked stark if it is 2 years from the bike being new or 2 years for a part that has been replaced, they replied 2 years from the bike being new so in other words they just keep sending us parts that will fail again.

The rust in the frame tapers will be an issue eventully it will fail but maybe not before the 2 years is up and that is all stark care about because big profit in selling spare parts compared to the price of the bike.

I will not agree with you on this one!

Other bike manufacturers that produce dirt bikes or mx bikes will not provide more than 60 days of cover... I do not understand why you are so unhappy with your purchase and with Stark as a company .. All I have seen from you on the forum is one way or another to make Stark look bad.

When a company is replacing batteries and drivetrains without asking any questions and we all know they are fairly substantial in price then I would not be worried about it. They are improving on the next generations and we as owners have taken a risk by buying such a product and it is covered for 2 years.

Once the warranty runs out extend the warranty if available if not buy another bike if you think the bike is that unreliable... also if you are not happy with your current purchase and the customer service why don't you sell and be happy on another forum.

There is plenty of examples of reputable brands that have bad designs, flaws and all sorts ( melting camshafts ( KTM ) , Shocks that destroy themselves and rusty frames ( BMW) , Yamaha exhaust bracket totalling the T7 rear frame etc.

Stark is a start up and has made a product that ( in my view ) is great and yes it is not perfect but there is no perfect brand out there and there will not be , forums with owners are supposed to find solutions to problems that brands have missed on doing either due to cost implications or design faults .

There are so many people who help each other and develop aftermarket products for bikes to make them better , this is for a reason as companies are not able to produce and meet demand targets and profits by making the perfect bikes.

I do hope that with people on the forum we can all find solutions to some of the issues we are seeing with the Stark and the major things are being covered and updated by Stark.

 

[Beagle]

That's a legit question but I would not preemptively assign malice to Stark for something that might or might not happen when the first warranties expire around 2025 summer.
What we do know is that 2 years warranty for dirt bikes is unheard of, that part failures did happen, and that warranty worked pretty well with Stark sending parts in a few days after online diagnosis.

So we have seen part failures (battery, powertrain, VCU...) but we don't have much data about it:
- don't know how prevalent it is (how many bikes were affected over the roughly 10 000 bikes produced so far),
- don't know how prevalent it is in the last batches (I'm talking production date so VIN, not date of transaction), that could narrow down the number of bikes potentially affected,
- don't know how likely it would be for such part failures to happen after 2 years of working fine (we've seen some parts failing in quite early hours, if it's QC issue, does it mean if your bike is running fine for 2 years that your parts are not affected, or could they still fail?)
- don't know how Stark would react with an hypothetical part failure after warranty expires.

In short, we don't have a clue 🫣
Keep an eye on this but don't get worked up already, it's too soon

 

[UKLee]

I will not agree with you on this one!

Other bike manufacturers that produce dirt bikes or mx bikes will not provide more than 60 days of cover... I do not understand why you are so unhappy with your purchase and with Stark as a company .. All I have seen from you on the forum is one way or another to make Stark look bad.

When a company is replacing batteries and drivetrains without asking any questions and we all know they are fairly substantial in price then I would not be worried about it. They are improving on the next generations and we as owners have taken a risk by buying such a product and it is covered for 2 years.

Once the warranty runs out extend the warranty if available if not buy another bike if you think the bike is that unreliable... also if you are not happy with your current purchase and the customer service why don't you sell and be happy on another forum.

There is plenty of examples of reputable brands that have bad designs, flaws and all sorts ( melting camshafts ( KTM ) , Shocks that destroy themselves and rusty frames ( BMW) , Yamaha exhaust bracket totalling the T7 rear frame etc.

Stark is a start up and has made a product that ( in my view ) is great and yes it is not perfect but there is no perfect brand out there and there will not be , forums with owners are supposed to find solutions to problems that brands have missed on doing either due to cost implications or design faults .

There are so many people who help each other and develop aftermarket products for bikes to make them better , this is for a reason as companies are not able to produce and meet demand targets and profits by making the perfect bikes.

I do hope that with people on the forum we can all find solutions to some of the issues we are seeing with the Stark and the major things are being covered and updated by Stark.

"Other bike manufacturers that produce dirt bikes or mx bikes will not provide more than 60 days of cover... I do not understand why you are so unhappy with your purchase and with Stark as a company .. All I have seen from you on the forum is one way or another to make Stark look bad."

To say that you must have seen my other posts, that tells you why I am so unhappy with stark, got to the stage now that I can not be bothered to take the stark to an event I take one of the other (mainly yamaha) ICE bikes instead, it is one problem after another and I have lost confidence in it and certainly do not want my kids risking Injury because it cut out or locked up on the blind side of a jump.

People go on about it having a 2 year warranty, ask yourself this would you buy a new product from a new firm who have never built anything before with the same warranty we get with proven bike like I do from a yamaha? Not a chance would I, Yes when it does go it is ok but to many issues and I honestly do not think it is any faster on track than our ICE bikes.
Oh and for the record I have plenty of older ktm's but would not go near a modern one.

 

[Aleksandar13]

"Other bike manufacturers that produce dirt bikes or mx bikes will not provide more than 60 days of cover... I do not understand why you are so unhappy with your purchase and with Stark as a company .. All I have seen from you on the forum is one way or another to make Stark look bad."

To say that you must have seen my other posts, that tells you why I am so unhappy with stark, got to the stage now that I can not be bothered to take the stark to an event I take one of the other (mainly yamaha) ICE bikes instead, it is one problem after another and I have lost confidence in it and certainly do not want my kids risking Injury because it cut out or locked up on the blind side of a jump.

People go on about it having a 2 year warranty, ask yourself this would you buy a new product from a new firm who have never built anything before with the same warranty we get with proven bike like I do from a yamaha? Not a chance would I, Yes when it does go it is ok but to many issues and I honestly do not think it is any faster on track than our ICE bikes.
Oh and for the record I have plenty of older ktm's but would not go near a modern one.

Unfortunately us consumers get the good bad and the ugly, I agree that Yamaha build exceptional bikes and they are very reliable . Humans do not take decisions based on logic but on emotion and this is where we end up buying products that might not be the best but they make us feel good and we have to put up with the bad things that they bring with us... otherwise we would all be riding Yamaha's and no other brands ( KTM , Husky , Ducati , etc ) would be successful.

I understand your frustration with the bike and I am not in your position , mine has been ok for now and hopefully will be for the future. I also accept that this is a new company with loads to learn and the only reason I trusted them was the 2 year warranty and I am more then happy to sell mine and buy a new one after 2 years and take a hit. The same as I have done with BMW's where if there was no warranty I would not touch them.

As you say , Yamaha will be the only brand I would and have owned outside warranty.

Hope you get things sorted with Stark.

 

[AL_V]

Pretty simple question, has anyone made claims outside the window and has stark made accommodations? Curious if some of the gen1 folks making claims knowing they are outside the window.

Pretty simple answer: NO ONE has owned a Stark Varg for over 2 years, so NO ONE is out of warranty.
Bryan Haskell was the first customer to take delivery of his bike around May 18 2023.

 

[Theo]

The rust in the frame tapers will be an issue eventully it will fail but maybe not before the 2 years is up and that is all stark care about because big profit in selling spare parts compared to the price of the bike.

What you are talking about is basically planned obsolescence, which I believe is something real and implemented by many companies, even the reputable ones, but I think not by Stark, that I trust.
Since our bikes are connected to the internet and can be remotely controlled and updated by Stark, if you don't trust them and after the warranty has expired you have a steady red light and they tell you that you need an expensive new part, you could even suspect that they have forced the bike to behave like that. Or maybe you could suspect that our bikes are programmed to fail after a random amount of months after the warranty has expired. Way easier to do that than intentionally design a structural part to rust and fail but only after two years: it would take quite some research and development to achieve that!!
I think they wouldn't do anything like that, though, for the following reasons:
• they have convinced me that they care about honesty and ethics and yes, I am aware that in this world most of the people don't care. Remember that A. Wass is Swedish and I've heard wonderful things about the honesty in the culture of people from Northen Europe. If they haven't kept all their promises about certain things, like the availability of power curve adjustments, I think it was not intentional. The fact that they easily replace expensive parts under warranty doesn't surprise me so much.
• Electric dirtbikes are still relatively new, they evolve pretty fast and in the next years there will probably be technological breakthroughs which will allow Stark to produce bikes way better than the current Varg; my experience has taught me that it's very hard to predict what will be improved but that it's very likely that there will be some, unwknown for now, huge improvements. They will probably sell more bikes to those people who don't feel like buying one now because of something that doesn't suit their needs yet, like range.
• Reputation is earned in droplets and lost in buckets; I really think that they want to minimize failures for that reason, too and again, the fact that they easily replace expensive parts under warranty doesn't surprise me so much.

I suppose that, after the warranty will have expired, they will repair power units and batteries instead of replacing them. I guess that now they replace them because that's the most satisfying outcome for customers and they want to keep customers satisfied as much as they can. They may not want the failed components back because they wouldn't sell refurbished parts anyways now, since every Varg is still under warranty.

Once the warranty runs out extend the warranty if available

That would be an interesting option!

 

[Foss]

Pretty simple answer: NO ONE has owned a Stark Varg for over 2 years, so NO ONE is out of warranty.
Bryan Haskell was the first customer to take delivery of his bike around May 18 2023.

I have one of the legacy gen1’s. I’ll have to check but my manufacturer date is Nov 2022

 

[AL_V]

I have one of the legacy gen1’s. I’ll have to check but my manufacturer date is Nov 2022

Stark Future will be liable for any defects arising in the Products within two years from the date of delivery to the acquiring end-user,...
Edit: added link: Terms and Conditions | Stark Future
Where do you find your manufacture date, and if any bikes were manufactured in Nov 22, why did they wait 6 months to deliver any to customers?

 

[Foss]

Stark Future will be liable for any defects arising in the Products within two years from the date of delivery to the acquiring end-user,...
Edit: added link: Terms and Conditions | Stark Future
Where do you find your manufacture date, and if any bikes were manufactured in Nov 22, why did they wait 6 months to deliver any to customers?

I think you can view it in the phone somewhere. When I get home I will check. But so far they have not been resistant so far with one claim I am making.

 

[AL_V]

I found this on FB, I think this is Bryan Haskell's MCO:

 

[Beagle]

I found this on FB, I think this is Bryan Haskell's MCO:
View attachment 12728

Yes it is. As you said, warranty starts at delivery, not at production date.

To know production year of your bike you can check your VIN 10th digit: N is for 2022, P for 2023, R for 2024 (2023-2024 cutoff around 3000).

They've had to build a factory from the ground up and build some limited stock before they started deliveries to customers. Yet it was deemed too slow, imagine if they had started deliveries directly after the first production runs when they were making something like 10 bikes per day, the delay between first delivery and 1000th pre-order delivery would have been even larger!

Now that they can make about 1000 bikes per month, I should be easier to reduce waiting list for the Varg EX (also they won't have thousands of pre-orders that had been waiting for 18 months).

 

[UKLee]

What you are talking about is basically planned obsolescence, which I believe is something real and implemented by many companies, even the reputable ones, but I think not by Stark, that I trust.
Since our bikes are connected to the internet and can be remotely controlled and updated by Stark, if you don't trust them and after the warranty has expired you have a steady red light and they tell you that you need an expensive new part, you could even suspect that they have forced the bike to behave like that. Or maybe you could suspect that our bikes are programmed to fail after a random amount of months after the warranty has expired. Way easier to do that than intentionally design a structural part to rust and fail but only after two years: it would take quite some research and development to achieve that!!
I think they wouldn't do anything like that, though, for the following reasons:
• they have convinced me that they care about honesty and ethics and yes, I am aware that in this world most of the people don't care. Remember that A. Wass is Swedish and I've heard wonderful things about the honesty in the culture of people from Northen Europe. If they haven't kept all their promises about certain things, like the availability of power curve adjustments, I think it was not intentional. The fact that they easily replace expensive parts under warranty doesn't surprise me so much.
• Electric dirtbikes are still relatively new, they evolve pretty fast and in the next years there will probably be technological breakthroughs which will allow Stark to produce bikes way better than the current Varg; my experience has taught me that it's very hard to predict what will be improved but that it's very likely that there will be some, unwknown for now, huge improvements. They will probably sell more bikes to those people who don't feel like buying one now because of something that doesn't suit their needs yet, like range.
• Reputation is earned in droplets and lost in buckets; I really think that they want to minimize failures for that reason, too and again, the fact that they easily replace expensive parts under warranty doesn't surprise me so much.

I suppose that, after the warranty will have expired, they will repair power units and batteries instead of replacing them. I guess that now they replace them because that's the most satisfying outcome for customers and they want to keep customers satisfied as much as they can. They may not want the failed components back because they wouldn't sell refurbished parts anyways now, since every Varg is still under warranty.


That would be an interesting option!

"What you are talking about is basically planned obsolescence,"
I am very well aware of that, parts are designed to fail, you see test rigs cycling parts to give the potential customer confidence that it will last forever, what people do not understand is these same test rigs also used to make sure it does not last too long.
If you bought a £10,000 bike and bought every individual part to build a complete bike the parts bill would come to around £40,000 to £50,000 and the manufacturer does not have to pay workers to put it together. In other words they make many times more profit selling a spare part than they do that part as part of a bike so no suprise they design parts to fail ideally just after the warranty is up.

Yes I do get the impression people from northern europe are often decent people I look at it with envy because it seems over the last decade or 2 much of the UK population has gone to the dogs but that is another story.
Sorry but Anton wass and his buddy look like and talk like a couple of slimy salesman you would expect to be "greeted" by in a ktm showroom not that you would get me anywhere near a ktm showroom I have refused to buy there products for the last 10 years. Dont know about ready to race more like ready to fail, confirmed by there current situation.

If you are looking for Morals, honesty and ethics then Japan has to be right up there, it certainly shows in the many yamahas we have and have had in recent years.

Back to the actual frame issue I did notice when removing the bolt in the taper it was very tight almost all the way out to the end of the thread and there was lots of what I assumed was threadlock or could have been some kind of sealer around the bolt head maybe in an attempt to seal it to stop water getting in to the taper. This seems an odd way to seal it and clearly is not working. Starks reply of "the rust in the frame taper comes form the combination of aluminum and iron leads to corrosion,” made me laugh, no the combination of iron and water leads to corrosion/rust.
Just hope when I do need a new frame I can get one with the correct frame number on it.

 

[Theo]

Another thing that occurs to me is that Stark has stressed how they care about the environment multiple times and in multiple ways: according to the very first pages of the Varg manual, their main goal is to change the motorcycle industry by showing how it can be sustainable, the circle in the Stark logo also represents the full circle economy and Wass has stated something similar in interviews. So IMHO this increases the chance that they will propose repairs or refurbished products instead of giving the only possibility to replace them, because it would be consistent with those statements.
They also mention, in the warranty section of the manual, that they may repair products for free, partially or totally, outside warranty, in case they will consider that it will be proper.
Everybody is of course free to believe the above or not; at least these assumptions are based on official statements from them.

 

[Chaconne]

"What you are talking about is basically planned obsolescence,"
I am very well aware of that, parts are designed to fail, you see test rigs cycling parts to give the potential customer confidence that it will last forever, what people do not understand is these same test rigs also used to make sure it does not last too long.
If you bought a £10,000 bike and bought every individual part to build a complete bike the parts bill would come to around £40,000 to £50,000 and the manufacturer does not have to pay workers to put it together. In other words they make many times more profit selling a spare part than they do that part as part of a bike so no suprise they design parts to fail ideally just after the warranty is up.

Yes I do get the impression people from northern europe are often decent people I look at it with envy because it seems over the last decade or 2 much of the UK population has gone to the dogs but that is another story.
Sorry but Anton wass and his buddy look like and talk like a couple of slimy salesman you would expect to be "greeted" by in a ktm showroom not that you would get me anywhere near a ktm showroom I have refused to buy there products for the last 10 years. Dont know about ready to race more like ready to fail, confirmed by there current situation.

If you are looking for Morals, honesty and ethics then Japan has to be right up there, it certainly shows in the many yamahas we have and have had in recent years.

Back to the actual frame issue I did notice when removing the bolt in the taper it was very tight almost all the way out to the end of the thread and there was lots of what I assumed was threadlock or could have been some kind of sealer around the bolt head maybe in an attempt to seal it to stop water getting in to the taper. This seems an odd way to seal it and clearly is not working. Starks reply of "the rust in the frame taper comes form the combination of aluminum and iron leads to corrosion,” made me laugh, no the combination of iron and water leads to corrosion/rust.
Just hope when I do need a new frame I can get one with the correct frame number on it.

We should be honest with ourselves. Companies/corporations are in business to make money and no matter what the groomed image is it is the same. For example, I love the Japanese motorcycles I have had over the years, but not all their products are winners. And some terrible junk (even deadly --like 2T crotch rockets) has come out of Japan over the years and their companies have often been unwilling to support remedies.

Point is no company or nation of production is perfect. You have people here in the US who rant on and on about how bad Chinese stuff is while at the same time they fill their carts full of Chinese stuff at Walmart and tell all their friends about the great Walmart deals they got while blabbing it on their Chinese made iPhones --the irony is apparently lost.

I bought a brand new KTM 300 2T off the floor in 2020 it is a good well made product only slightly less well built than my 2014 Yam WR450F (also bought brand new by me). So far the Stark is in the middle mostly due to some of the KTM-like Euro quirks but my bike has been super reliable, easy to work on, and with better company support than any of my Japanese bikes.

I know you have had some bad experiences, not trying to downplay it, but not everybody has had the same and overall in my experience at least so far with my Stark has been it is one of my better purchases over the last 30+ of owning dirtbikes and OHVs.

 

[AL_V]

I want to say my Varg has been absolutely perfect.
But that's only if I ignore these very minor issues:
1) I had to do the screw mod to the kickstand.
2) I replaced the front plastic tube (put a tubliss in the rear anyway which I would have done on any bike).
3) The occasional minor inconvenience of losing communication between the phone and bike, which usually is remedied by blanking and unblanking the phone screen.
4) A little heavier than initially claimed (but surprisingly NOT a problem).
Not bad!
And ALL of these minor issues are more than forgiven since reverse was added AFTER I bought the bike!
I'm a HUGE fan of Stark! I would probably order an EX if I wasn't expecting a price drop after the initial demand settles down...