Why not just go braided and stop babying the thing? One decent braided cord outlasts three cheap ones that keep dying in the bin. Pack it, forget it, done.

40 extra minutes just from a light air blast? That's wild to me, I would've bet money dry was close enough on 4140. I ran dry for years on a manual mill mostly out of laziness, but that kind of gain is hard to argue with. Guess the rep earned his paycheck that day.

Did you try messing with the flow rate at all before you gave up on it? I had a similar thing happen with a fancy scale that had a built in timer and app, it just added steps and made my morning routine annoying. I sold it and went back to my cheap jewelry scale and a phone timer, honestly my pours got way more consistent because I stopped overthinking it and just felt the water. Sometimes the basic tool just gets out of the way and lets you actually dial in your grind and ratio.