2018 YZ450F Starter Clutch... Yes another one.

Hey guys i will try to make this short and to the point. So about a week ago i was loading my bike to go to the local track and i bumped the electric start for a moment with the exhaust plug in( im not sure if this has any significance) and when i unloaded the bike and went to start it all the bike did was make a loud high pitched whining noise like the starter was just spinning and not cranking the motor. I had heard that these bikes have been having issues with the starter so i just went ahead and bump started the bike. 2 laps in and i stall the bike in the back track and think to myself shit now i have to try and bumpstart this thing in soft sand so as a last ditch effort i hit the start button and the bike fired right up to my amazement. It continued to start the rest of the day and then i tried it multiple times over the next couple days and it worked everytime. Now of course when i go to ride on friday i unload the bike and the starter wont crank the motor again. I bump start it and go ride but this time the starter doesnt work at all for the whole day.

That brings me to yesterday where i decided to go ahead and pull the starter clutch out myself since yamaha and the dealer want to act like this isnt a known problem with these bikes. (the guy i talked on the phone with at yamaha actually said to me that he didnt know what a yz450f was, unbelievable). Anyways i pulled the clutch and everything and when i pulled the holder for the damper assy and the starter clutch the washer that is supposed to hold on the starter clutch fell onto the ground. Turns out it is supposed to be held in by a circlip which is no where to be found on my bike ( i did find a couple small metal fragments inside my oil screen located next to the oil sight glass). So that was my first issue, no circlip. When i went ahead and tested the starter clutch like the manual says, clockwise it should spin freely and counter clockwise it should engage, it seemed to do exactly that. I inspected the damper assy as well and everything seemed fine. So i went up to the local dealer and tried to get a circlip that i was missing and of course you cant buy it , you have to buy the whole starter clutch. Lucky for me i have known the service tech there for a while and she went and pulled a valve retainer for an older 1700 road warrior and told me it would work for what i needed it for.

So this morning i go ahead and reassemble the whole bike but this time with the circlip in place. Once its back together i go ahead and try to start the bike (fingers crossed) and it does the same thing again, starter is spinning freely but not cranking the motor. I bump start the bike to make sure everything else is fine and it runs great. I shut it off and try to start it again and the starter cranks the motor over right away(WTF). I shut it off to try one more time and the starter is spinning freely once again.

I say screw this, pull the starter motor as well and everything seems to check out there as well. So now i am completely stumped. But as i start thinking about it i remember that whenever i would try to start the bike and the starter would spin freely, as the starter would almost come to a stop you could hear the starter clutch engage (almost the same sound when you bump the starter really quick where you can just hear all the moving parts lock together compared to the whining sound of the starter just spinning freely)

So my question is, Did i fail to properly test the starter clutch? Maybe when i was spinning it counter clockwise and it was engaging i just wasnt putting it under the amount of torque that it would take to actually crank the motor over, and that is why it sounds like it is engaging as the starter motor comes to a stop? Also has anyone heard of the circlips breaking off of the end of the starter clutch shaft like that?

Im really hoping its the starter clutch and i just didnt test it properly. Thank you for reading and i hope you can help Bike has ~33 hours on it.