Just received mine and the quality is absolutely atrocious. I have Thicwhips/Panda badges, which fit perfectly and look 100% OEM. But I wanted to change colors to gold, to revive a little bit of that classic Toyota gold badge energy. But, wow, I might as well have bought these from Aliexpress...
The reason people largely stick with turbos in the stock locatkon is because the EWG is very good, and the whole engine is thermally and electronically packaged to put a turbo down low on the block. Even many of the big power top mount builds are going down low for these reasons, and the options...
For whatever it's worth:
Remnant Performance is working on an alternative hot side for the 65 Omega that will give up a few hundred RPM of spool in exchange for supporting 800-900WHP. It'll cost a few hundred bucks and is a bolt-on upgrade, don't even need to take the turbo out.
You'll never...
Also, don't take it back to that shop because they charged you 6 hours of labor on a project that takes under 90 minutes inclusive of the time it takes to put the car in the air.
Did you transfer the gasket from the OE pipe to the new pipe? There's an o-ring on the inside diameter. I believe it's orange. Could also be pale green.