The starter-ectomy is done. The main tricky part was getting the blanking plate to seal properly. I made it out of a 1/4 piece of aluminum and the part that it bolts down to on the engine casing is nice and flat and easy to do. Even though I took out the sprag and the gears I had to leave the middle starter gear as it retains it's bearing which is installed from the middle of the main cases. This project didn't warrant splitting the main cases. That gear sits about 1/16" proud of the opening of the case so I had to grind out the back of the blanking plate for it to sit flat over the gear (sorry I didn't take pictures.)
All-in-all a fairly simple operation but I am not a machinist, only a third rate mechanic at best, and my hats off to the likes of people like scooter bob and the folks at ACE who do the real magic stuff. I don't know how you do it.
Also, if you recall, my clutch used to make a squeeling noise when it was engaging and I found that after I took the left side cover off, the clutch nut was totally loose. That problem is now solved.
I am happy with the results but I must note that for anyone looking at this for a work around the starter sprag, The sprag is super easy to replace and I don't know if it was a worthwhile project just for the means of either reliability or weight-savings; but for me it's a look and feel thing of a kick-start only bike, so yeah, just plain silliness! And now I have the worlds only kick-start only fuel-injected motorcycle! The two don't seem to go together but fuel injected bikes are so easy to start the electric starter may never have been invented if fuel injection had always been around
Another note is that the two bolts that hold the starter on the right side go all the way through the main case and need replacing with shorter bolts to fill the holes. I discovered that the hard way when I got to work yesterday to find my engine and underside of the gas tank covered in oil!
I will be putting the manual decompressor on hold because my auto-decompression mechanism seems to be majically working like it's supposed to now. Probably just the warm weather. Enough blabbing for now. Time to ride.