well, last things first. takes about 35-40 psi on a not so trustworthy gauge to get it all the way up. now, update. i took the actuator apart to see if i could flip the internals around. not going to happen. in doing so though, i realised that operating off boost would not be a good idea. because when you're cruising down the interstate, at hopefully less than 10 psi, it would want to be all closed up. not giving you any of the advantages of the mechanism. all i can figure, is that i need to get a signal from the crank sensor, and have an electrical engineering buddy make a variable regulator and connect it to some on-board air type thing. and, i found out that i DO need the shaft rpm sensor. couldn't figure out what that hole was for. so, if anybody has one of those just laying around or something, let me know. so, thanks for the input so far. i'm glad i'm not the only one interested in getting this figured out. if you come up with any more thoughts (like, why my thinking above could be flawed somehow), please bring them to the table.
dave