I stopped by Hazzard Fraight to pick up some spring compressors, and got a new impact screwdriver, and after a few taps of the wrong way (lol) I got the front thing off:
That's clutch material, It's full of it, which explains everything...
This screw being loose explains some of the noises too:
Everything else in that side of the case looks fine, I removed that gear and tightened the screw to the factory torque, I'll keep an eye on it and throw some blue loctite on it, or maybe peen the head if it backs out again.
Then, I got the clutch pack open -- by hand mind you, which shouldn't happen. and saw this gem:
It was really odd, there was one of those completely stripped of all friction material, and then two that had lots of material left, like this one;
So, in the interest of never having to do this again, I bought this for spare parts:
And 3x new Barnett Clutch friction discs. The used clutch assembly I bought has the late-1969 style six-springs, where two springs try to keep the steels spread apart when not under tension. It's a better design, and ultimately it's what Honda went with on everyone's favourite death machine, the ATC 110.
So, back to waiting for parts.
In the meantime, take a gander at this video, the CT110 is the 20cc larger version of mine: