I'm going to start a thread to put upgrades/mods for the ls10 like you suggested. Maybe you can pitch in on that when you get done with you sandwich. No hurry would like to see the 1/8 maxx diff done along with some of the other ideas you've got brewing too.
I really need to get a sandwich to read the whole post, but I will say that the hpi cvds I used were crap... They broke very easily. Maybe some sort of MIP cvd would work, not sure how they measure them though...