Xbee and arduino communication

Projects Programming
1

So, I have the code almost finalized but seems I get a small error when I turn the steering wheel all the way to the left or all the way to the right. Anytime in between the min and max of the steering wheel it records perfectly for about 10 seconds and then does what I show below. Once I hit the either end it messes up like below. But, when I clear the serial monitor and make another it continues back to working great until I hit either min/max.

2 
  while(Serial.available() > 0)
  {
    delay(2);
    var = Serial.read();
    // less than, <, starts the current value
    if(var == '<')
    {
      Serial.print("STARTED: ");
      Serial.println(var);
      while(firstComplete == false)
      {
        var=Serial.read();

You only check Serial.available() once. What if the 2nd character isn't available at this point?