Bram. Your swap should go fine. This is what happens when you step away from a proven product and try and save some coin and have ball bearing at the price point of journal bearings.

Turbo back off the car and ready to have the outlet repositioned.

I am learning more than I really wanted to on this build....

It's all part of the fun though, plus I now know not to go 3" inlet when it comes time to doing my car

I am still a big believer that once you go to a certain size turbo that you want a big inlet. My goal is to move the power curve left.

And the outlet.

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Bye bye betty blue. Hello F6.

Connect a vacuum gauge to ur inlet, u will find out whether u need a anti surge inlet.

using the Perth-WRX mobile app

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MY08 STI 422whp at 1.5bar on E85, built by Diversion Garage, assembled and tuned by EvoR

Update from new owner: 375whp at 1.4bar on 98, at Tokyo Motorsport

This. That size turbo would typically come with a 4inch inlet if bought from Garret. Its only when putting it on a stock location subaru (2.4inch) that you would ever try and choke it with an inlet WAY less than half that size (area not diameter). And thats because you litterally cant go much bigger than that in stock location. Even putting a 3inch inlet (approx half the area of 4inch) is still a massive compromise, but atleast saves you the headache of going away from a stock location swap.

I reckon you should always go the biggest inlet you can. And if you want to remain stock location, then that means 3 inch.

Unfortuantly, this 'stock location' turbo still has plenty of headaches, but doesnt gain the benefits of a twist mount setup.

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Doing it for all the wagons out there

Twist is worth thinking about if you haven't yet bought headers or have a separate up pipe design. My up pipe is integral with the headers.

I am starting to get confident again of success... Next up will be going the the engine break in process.

anti surge inlet has absolutely nothing to do with letting air into the turbo. its all about letting air out of the turbo during surge conditions. ie when the turbo is spinning fast, but the engine air demand is low. (like when youve just boosted hard, then you close the throttle) if you look at a compressor map, the left most edge is the area of compressor surge. having anti surge holes/ports extends that a bit by allowing some of the compressed air to bypass the engine back into the turbo inlet. so your turbo can be spinning fast, but not supplying as much volume of air if needed, without the turbo surging (stalling).

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Doing it for all the wagons out there

I was interested to see the anti surge cover. It is a work of art. I will have to do some research as to how it works as initially I thought that the drilled holes that are common on most anti surge setups were just there to break up laminar friction, similar to the dimples on a golf ball. But after looking at my turbo I can see that air can actually run through the slots and enter on to the compressor wheel from its side.