Hey evil ,

I had same friction and leakage isues , read my post a bit back about clearancing the cartridge caps , and honing out the stock x rings a bit. The x rings will loosen up as you run them and become much smoother as you go , but i dont have patients to wait. Lots of greem slime , cartridges in the correct direction and you should be good to go. I also went to a softer bladder and it seemed to eliminate the big hit blow outs i got from the og firm as plastic bladders.

j