For anyone curious, then new coupler solved the second part of the problem. But, it had been a while, so I replaced all three couplers with new ones ( with
THESE ). They also have different ones, I just got them red, because racecar .. lol (
HERE). Also replaced all t-bolt clamps (source locally) with new ones, can't really hurt. Washed out the IC, Charge-pipe, DV's all that good stuff. Hopefully I should be good for a while now.