I have a bunch of pictures I should put up.... but wanted to do an update for you guys...
got the car running last week... fired up and idled on the first crank (so much for those terrible big injectors and that standalone eh? No cold start we're told). Everything is GREAT! Even the oil issue is gone which means I was having a backup problem or a poor seal on the oil feed lines on the turbo. I adjusted those because of the exhaust and it seems to have eliminated the issue. Also, the bigger piping all around and the improved gasket seals I'm sure helped a ton as well.
So one of the BIG things was that last year on the first external actuator I had running no boost controller I'd get about 7 psi... then I went to the bigger actuator later in the year and was able to get that to abotu 8 psi both of them though with the EBC connected peaked out about 13 psi and I'd get boost surge etc... so could never get more out of it than that...
Well as of now I'm not running the EBC at all yet, same actuator that gave me about 8 psi... and I now run about 16-18 psi!!!! Insane... so any question about if my exhaust was restrictive or not should be officially answered
The car idles and spools far better than it did and sounds much cleaner as well, so the exhaust was a HUGE limitation previously... glad that has been resolved. Early july I'll be doing a big dyno to go for max power (about 23 psi max I'll run). Don't want to do it before in case the transmission grenades on me or so forth as I have a drivers school june 24th, so I want to make sure the car is intact for that, and that I have money for fixing the car if need be.
Mods/Changes on this go-round (pictures to come)
160F thermostat (stock is 190)
Thermostat relocate and heater line re-run (soft hose now instaed of hardpipes)
1.75" cold side outlet elbow
Ported turbo compressor outlet
Evo III 16G O2 housing - ported and polished and matched to turbo
3" DP ported and matched, jet-hot coated
JIC Coilovers added
AWR rear trailing links added
I think that covers it!!
Oh... and I was peeling the tires at a roll on wet pavement at 60 mph

.. just feed in throttle and slide!! Even could do it a little in 4th gear from time to time.