Thank you for your swift/informative response. I found a ton of useful info. but would you recommend keeping the e-start but primarily using the kickstart? I was thinking I could used the e-start on cold mornings etc. Thanks for you help. It is very much appreciated!
Keeping the e-start in place but using the kick start does absolutely nothing to help protect the e-start system. You could never ever use the e-start, and the sprag system could be destroyed at any time, because it is engaged with the primary gears 100% of the time.
There is no way to protect it from destruction, except to remove it. It can break during starting, during any kickback(especially on cold mornings is when it happens), when you shut off the bike, or when the bike stalls out.
It breaks on cold mornings because most people aren't experts on jetting, and they leave the summer jets in as autumn falls, and the cold morning temperatures require richer jets, so the bike is too lean in cold weather, and it kicks back during a cold start, and the sprag gets wrecked. Every year at around this time we see a spate of killed sprags from this. I even usually write a warning post around this time each year to remind people to watch their jetting because it's "sprag killing season".
If it gets destroyed, and you leave it in there, then it can lock up or drop little metal parts into the primary gears and wreck more things.
The whole electric start thing was a bad idea from the beginning. As stated above, unless you have a physical handicap, these bikes are easy to kick start. Even if you have a physical handicap and decide to keep the e-start in there, it is likely going to cost you thousands of dollars in multiple repairs over the years as it breaks and breaks again and breaks again, with several hundred dollars in parts cost and similar labor charges each times it breaks. And it will break a lot. We have one person here who is on his fifth sprag.
The best answer is to follow the directions given in the other threads about how to remove it from the bike forever, and forget that it was ever on there. This thing has been a constantly recurring nightmare here for at least the last ten years. It's probably the number one topic regarding unreliability and breakdowns.