Uh Oh!!!!! Stark guys keep an eye on your pivot mount.

[standbyu]

 

[SubSonic]

that is not good -

does it look like porosity in casting ?
post more pictures when U can

what kind of riding do you do ?

 

[standbyu]

that is not good -

does it look like porosity in casting ?
post more pictures when U can

what kind of riding do you do ?

Not mine. Origin of the pic debatable. Just posted for safety reasons. Better to be safe than sorry. I would suggest inspect often.

 

[Swank171]

Dang. I’m waiting to hear more about this….seems like the e bike community talks and is pretty connected….I’m wondering if we will get feedback on what happened and if it’s a recall worthy item or a one off defect….

 

[erSitzt]

Yeah would be nice to hear from the owner what and how exactly that happend...
I wonder which side went first, looks like left side broke first and then some lever action broke the case on the right side... so i would not be that concerned about how the casing looks, if this is a secondary failure. This part should never get any sideloading and probably wasnt designed for it.

Either way, looks bad, hope we get some official statement.

 

[F451]

I saw one of the original posts on FB or Insta I think, the guy flat landed a jump, over jumped it, I think it was 60', might have been less. People were discussing he weighed over 200 lbs + gear. I didn't save the post or I would link back to it. I personally won't be too concerned about this unless I see more failed castings from Stark.

It is a little scary though, I would not want to have that in the back of my mind if I was doing mx jumps regularly.

 

[standbyu]

I saw one of the original posts on FB or Insta I think, the guy flat landed a jump, over jumped it, I think it was 60', might have been less. People were discussing he weighed over 200 lbs + gear. I didn't save the post or I would link back to it. I personally won't be too concerned about this unless I see more failed castings from Stark.

It is a little scary though, I would not want to have that in the back of my mind if I was doing mx jumps regularly.

All that says is this is not the bike a fast guy should compete on at any local or national event. 200 lbs flatlanding a 60 footer? Fast guys land harder on longer obstacles than that on a regular basis lap after lap if its the fast line.

 

[F451]

All that says is this is not the bike a fast guy should compete on at any local or national event. 200 lbs flatlanding a 60 footer? Fast guys land harder on longer obstacles than that on a regular basis lap after lap if its the fast line.

Yes, of course people land harder on longer jumps all the time and all the modern bikes handle it just fine, usually. I was just relaying what I had read, from what seemed to be the original post of the damage.

The question in my mind is, is this a design flaw, or a bad casting run, or something else, that would effect more then just this one bike?

So far I haven't seen any other instances of the same damage, but I haven't been following the Varg's that closely lately. Hopefully its just a one off and we won't be seeing any more of these failures. Time will tell.

 

[Swank171]

I saw one of the original posts on FB or Insta I think, the guy flat landed a jump, over jumped it, I think it was 60', might have been less. People were discussing he weighed over 200 lbs + gear. I didn't save the post or I would link back to it. I personally won't be too concerned about this unless I see more failed castings from Stark.

It is a little scary though, I would not want to have that in the back of my mind if I was doing mx jumps regularly.

I’m a higher level rider at 210 without gear….not sure that excuse gives me a warm and fuzzy to do the booters or push it in the hills around here….especially that it seems over jumping maybe easier than on my bike…not having the gear or rpm ranges I’m used to gushing speed with I’d expect to be able to OJ and not worry about this….

I get there are the 1 in a million things that happen….maybe this is one of those. It’s just so early for something like this to happen. Time will tell! I haven’t changed my mind that stark is an amazing company and they have done the impossible up to this point.

 

[UKLee]

I asked stark about this they replied......

Thank you for contacting Stark.
Regarding the broken motor case, it requires an incredible amount of force to cause such a catastrophic rupture. We are still gathering information and arranging for the bike to return to our HQ for lab analysis and investigating the circunstances of this failure.
Please let us know if there’s anything else we can assist you with at this time.

Best regards,

Stark Future Team

 

[standbyu]

wheels are stronger than the frame apparently

 

[Hotsauce]

anyways… that reply from stark future is one of the reasons why I chose to purchase this bike without any buyers remorse. I read of a gentleman who had an issue with his motor and within days stark had him a new set up. Freak things happen to motorcycles no matter the brand. This doesn’t scare me one bit.

 

[Beckern]

All that says is this is not the bike a fast guy should compete on at any local or national event. 200 lbs flatlanding a 60 footer? Fast guys land harder on longer obstacles than that on a regular basis lap after lap if its the fast line.

I wonder if this could have been a loaner and very undersprung/under damped for the rider weight. Add som minor imperfections on the casting and you have a failure. Frames, links, suspension do fail regulary on all kind of bikes. Nothing special about this one as long as we don't see lots of them..

 

[standbyu]

I wonder if this could have been a loaner and very undersprung/under damped for the rider weight. Add som minor imperfections on the casting and you have a failure. Frames, links, suspension do fail regulary on all kind of bikes. Nothing special about this one as long as we don't see lots of them..

sorry but frames, pivot members, fork clamps do not fail regularly except on China crap.....to put all of this in perspective take all of the ridiculous supporting evidence posted above in defense of the failed Stark frame and apply it to Honda, KTM, Alta.....you find no broken frames on new bikes.........like I posted earlier: wheels explode before frames on repeated hard hits on bikes not rushed into production.......

 

[fsfs]

I wonder if this could have been a loaner and very undersprung/under damped for the rider weight. Add som minor imperfections on the casting and you have a failure. Frames, links, suspension do fail regulary on all kind of bikes. Nothing special about this one as long as we don't see lots of them..

Stark said the bike is going back to Spain for analysis so hopefully they will be able to determine what happened. I have seen it take repeated hard hits in testing so I think it is probably not a design issue but we will see what the analysis points to.

 

[Beckern]

sorry but frames, pivot members, fork clamps do not fail regularly except on China crap.....to put all of this in perspective take all of the ridiculous supporting evidence posted above in defense of the failed Stark frame and apply it to Honda, KTM, Alta.....you find no broken frames on new bikes.........like I posted earlier: wheels explode before frames on repeated hard hits on bikes not rushed into production.......

At other forums there have been posted pics of multiple frame failures of MX bikes. It happens. Not regularly for any specific manufacturer, but in the world wide picture I bet it isn't to far between total frame failures.
My point is that this may very well be a one off and it's way to early to categorize this as a major problem. If there are more of these, then we will talk..

 

[standbyu]

At other forums there have been posted pics of multiple frame failures of MX bikes. It happens. Not regularly for any specific manufacturer, but in the world wide picture I bet it isn't to far between total frame failures.
My point is that this may very well be a one off and it's way to early to categorize this as a major problem. If there are more of these, then we will talk..

show us just one pic of, as you claim, "multiple frame failures" pics of frame failures on a 2022/23 legacy brand that wasn't ran over by a D-10 cat or crashed into a cement wall in 5th gear..........this issue is why I never buy a first production run of a next/new generation of a legacy brand let alone a new manufacturers initial run........if I had one of the new Starks I would not ride it on a motocross track at full effort, my health is valued more than pride......a return to the seller and full reimbursement is the direction I would be going in personally

 

[standbyu]

I worked as a tech for years. I've seen a handful of broken swing arms, dog bones, and shocks. This one was a dealer demo in FL. I heard the CEO and CFO were quick to respond and the bike is boxed up as is and on its way back to bcn.

congratulations

 

[UKLee]

Stark said the bike is going back to Spain for analysis so hopefully they will be able to determine what happened. I have seen it take repeated hard hits in testing so I think it is probably not a design issue but we will see what the analysis points to.

"I have seen it take repeated hard hits in testing" Really ! Even more suprising they sent the bikes out to customers with footpegs that fail within a few rides.
We have all seen the many videos of ex top riders doing big jumps etc, yes it looks very spectacular but they are hitting the landing ramps every time so actully quite easy on the bike. Get some not so great riders getting it wrong and flat landing, landing on the face of another jump or "casing it" and this is far more likely to show up any weakness's in the design.
Did I see a video that Anton says they got the suspension linkage higher up than the current mx/enduro bikes? Could it be that doing that increases the load on the linkage to frame mounting point with the way the rising rate linkage works but stark only designed it to be as strong as the compertition?

Also seems a bit obsessed with lightweight, that could be his downfall.

Don't get me wrong I want this bike to work I have one but if there is a problem get on with putting it right recall the bikes and get it swapped for a part that is up to the job.

 

[fsfs]

"I have seen it take repeated hard hits in testing" Really ! Even more suprising they sent the bikes out to customers with footpegs that fail within a few rides.
We have all seen the many videos of ex top riders doing big jumps etc, yes it looks very spectacular but they are hitting the landing ramps every time so actully quite easy on the bike. Get some not so great riders getting it wrong and flat landing, landing on the face of another jump or "casing it" and this is far more likely to show up any weakness's in the design.
Did I see a video that Anton says they got the suspension linkage higher up than the current mx/enduro bikes? Could it be that doing that increases the load on the linkage to frame mounting point with the way the rising rate linkage works but stark only designed it to be as strong as the compertition?

Also seems a bit obsessed with lightweight, that could be his downfall.

Don't get me wrong I want this bike to work I have one but if there is a problem get on with putting it right recall the bikes and get it swapped for a part that is up to the job.

I cannot say for sure; we will have to wait for analysis of failed components. What I did say is that I have seen the bike take repeated abuse in testing. Complete overjumps of tabletops on purpose with the bike landing on completely flat ground. They had to put extra strong wheels on the bike in order to not break the spokes on the landing; same jump broke enough spokes on stock CRF450 to effectively cause the rim to detach from the hub. This jump was done repeatedly.

If I were to take a guess extreme pressure to start shipping and ramp production took its toll on QC. But I can't say that for sure until the failure analysis is complete. Like I said, time will tell.