Yeah, if you don't have problems, do not use
http://gerrit.rockbox.org/r/#/c/469/1 . It will only make things slower. I guess the speed decrease is why that change never got accepted.
Don't worry about the spindown timer. Trying to force 0 may cause unwanted extra drive power cycles. After that period of inactivity, Rockbox puts the drive into a low power mode and if possible on that player cuts drive power. (The 5.5G iPod can cut power.) You're not going to save a significant amount of power shortening that because idle power usage should be low, and the drive spends very little time in that state already. You might want to prolong the timer if the drive takes a long time to become available afterwards, but you didn't mention such a problem.