Hello Kevin,
when I read about your effort I told to myself "we MUST contact him and join forces!".
A friend and fellow tanker of my rc tank club (
www.carrirc.com) last year designed and built a Tamiya-compatible board for the HL RX18.
The board, called 'Italian Battle Unit' or IBU, did include some additional features such as support for standalone installation, minefield and, most of all, the 'bergepanzer' feature.
I must say that this was a great addition to the battlefield strategies, since we added two bergepanzers and a fixed (and automatic) repair workshop to our collection.
Therefore I cannot but recommend you to add that function to the MAKO adapter.
But I have a proposal which might be interesting towards a greater diffusion of such a feature worldwide: why not adopting the same IR repair pattern shot and recognized by the IBU?
That would add compatibility to the repair function between the only two boards worldwide featuring it, and maybe setting a new standard for the future.
I am also telling this to my friend Scooter (real name: Ivano), the designer of the IBU, which will have the last word about the technical aspects of this collaboration, but it looks greast to me!