I contacted Tial about that pinched diaphragm and they say it will be OK as long as there are no cracks or rips in the material. So I'll just have to be careful putting the wastegates back together.
Ben at STS says that the 10 lb springs are correct in the wastegates, and therefore having the rear vent ports plugged will cause the turbos to overboost, perhaps dangerously so in my opinion, if the car was tuned for a max boost of 10 psi. No one I have asked has been able to think of any logical reason why those ports were plugged up.
So I'll be cleaning out those ports as best I can and putting the wastegates back together again.
BTW, on another forum, the topic of how long my car has actually been down was brought up. So I went back and checked the dates, and here's what I came up with:
- 10/27/09 thru 09/17/10 at XtremeMotorsports in Blountstown, FL run by Chris Harwood. 325 days.
- 09/17/10 thru 11/18/11 at South Georgia Corvette in Thomasville, GA run by Aaron Scott. 427 days.
- 11/18/11 thru present sitting on the lift in my garage. 158 days and counting.
So actually this has been ongoing for 910 days, or about two and a half years all total.