Bottleneck, and my 31 character limit. Ideas?

[unix-ninja]

Not sure why the heck I'm being jumped upon here.

If you want open source, get John the Ripper or Cryptohaze.

If you want to learn about the design limitations of oclHashcat, you are better off reading ocl docs and trying to write your own SHA1 cracking. That will teach your more than reading hashcat source.