whitcomb, would I be asking too much if I wanted some detail pics of your work? Inlet, outlet, casing, rotor housing and so on. In my mind, it would make sense that if you close off the slits you could open the porting up more, but thats in my own reasoning, the physics and real life application of it may not line up with my reasoning.
But Id like some pics of the whole thing as I may see if I can find a spare case to work on and see how it all goes. Its not a huge amount of work to pull off the blower, so it could be an easy project to work on.