**edit** Full Race just contacted me in an attempt to get in touch with the guy who owns this car. That is a sign of a good vendor/company. They want to make it right. Apparently they have never made a kit that promised evo 9 fitment. It sounds like this issue was a mis-comunication between the vendor that sold them the kit and the car owner about if it would fit. I have no doubt that the owner and full race will get this all worked out **edit**

A friend and I put a full race turbo kit on an evo 9 MR this weekend. There are a few issues with the kit as it stands that we ran into. You are going to have to pardon some things I say, I have a subaru, and we are good mechanics, but not super familiar with the evo.

Headers: Beautiful, well made, dont fit. The header comes too close to the evo's head. We had to grind away part of the head, AND bang in the header to get it to fit. There is no way you can install a header wrong (or play with the fit), it was just too close to the head, it would have hit badly, and needed a lot of modification to fit. They sent no bolts for fitting the turbo to the header.

Turbo: Big thing, fit fine, needed to be clocked, but that is not a big deal at all. The supplied oil feed and return brackets had the holes drilled too closely and would not just bolt on. The holes needed to be enlarged slightly, not a big deal, just took up more time. They also only sent 1 stud for the downpipe, and no bolts.

Downpipe: This thing hangs toooo low. They put hangers on it for the rear 2 hangers, but the downpipe sits about 3" below that. Again, not much you can really do here for such a problem. We will be either moving the hangers at a future date, or cutting up the downpipe to get it to sit higher (it really is too low now). Also, the location of the 02 sensor is moved pretty dramatically, get ready to extend the wires atleast 6 inches or so. They also forgot to send us a downpipe gasket. The end of the downpipe has a strange flange on it that I have never seen on an aftermarket exhaust. We needed it to have a 3" flat flange, so we cut up the downpipe (aftermarket) that was on the car and welded on the old flange. Not a big deal, just more time.

Other issues: Radiator fit, I was shocked. I was always told you had to do a 1/2 radiator on these cars with big turbo's, not true here. We did have to use an autozone fan and wire it into the stock fan control unit, but it looks good, and you could never tell it was aftermarket when we got done with it. We used the heat blanket and clamps to wrap the radiator hoses and such that got close to the headers. They also did not include a lower I/C pipe. This was a problem since this turbo set farther towards the drivers side then the stock turbo, and we had to fab up an I/C pipe at 10pm so we could get the car out the door.

*edit* forgot to mention, the position of the turbo was so close to the front engine mount that we had to cut one side of the motor mount down so that the motor mount did not cut up the silicon coupler on the turbo outlet.


The car was finished last night at about 11pm (25 hours of work for the clutch and the turbo kit on a lift with welders, air tools, etc). It is on the way to atl to be tuned at topspeed. Looking back on it, it could have been worse, but for a "bolt on turbo kit" not much bolted on (if they had even sent most of the required bolts!)...

thanks for the honest review.

Pics would be great... espically of the rad clearance.

Wow I was expecting alot more from the FR kit. I hope FR corrects these problems because their kit isnt exactly cheap.

interesting read... i myself almost bought the FR kit.

Wow you needed to grind away part of the head and re-drill holes and the downpipe didnt fit. Pretty awesome

I guess its safe to say no one else is going to buy this kit.

Im confused how a company like FR who has a great reputation in the drag racing industry can produce such a terrible kit. I mean, their manifold doesnt even fit on the car? Im convinced many mfg's who make products for our cars just produce the stuff and never even test fit it for christ sake.

Thats why Im going to buy AMS. I dont hear too many rumors about people grinding away the head to make the AMS kits fit do ya Not to mention they're most popular.

After reading the first few sentences of the first post I stopped reading.....

My advice to everyone is to buy a kit that is test proven to fit and perform and is easy and straight forward to install....dont cheap out or cut corners unless you are good at overcoming installation obstacles

I looked into the FR 35R kit and was not impressed with the install stories I read about on here. My AMS kit install from start to finish was around 5 hours....every single piece was included and there was not a single fitment issue.

I'm almost positive someone is going to come on here and try defending FR and their kits.. however, if the kit was $2700, I wouldnt have even made any comments. The fact that their kits are usually THE MOST EXPENSIVE you can buy for the EVO, you would think fitment would be a top priority. Why would I pay more for a kit thats not going to make any more power than an AMS kit and fit like absolute crap? Please, someone tell me... and the answer I dont wanna hear is "because its Full-race yo"

Guys, with a new downpipe and header, this kit would really not be that bad at all. I have installed far worse. I just wanted to outline every issue we encountered. We have not contacted full race (it was a customer's car we installed this stuff on) since the car was going to tune tomorrow, and they needed to get it to atl asap.

As I said, I am not super evo knowledgeable, but is the evo 9 head somehow a different casting then the previous evo heads? If that was true, then that would explain the manifold not fitting. As for the downpipe, I got nothing. Once those 2 issues are fixed (and ALL the bolts are included), this kit would be an 8 out of 10 in fitment as far as I am concerned...

I appreicate your honesty in the review but let me explicate on what you just said a little more. You said if the kit had a better downpipe and header it wouldnt be bad.

Well, what else comes with the kit, the turbo, WG, 02 housing and some oil lines? A turbo and WG are standard parts that are fitment based. Everything they fabricated DIDNT FIT other than the 02 housing!

As for the EVO9 head.. Im 99% sure the casting itself is completely unchanged.

This kit included:

turbo
manifold
intake (w/ filter)
44mm tial WG
WG dump tube (this fit GREAT!)
downpipe

We already had an AMS intercooler on the car (talk about an installer's dream, that thing fit great!)

Injectors (if I remember correctly) are 740's or 780's and there is an SMC meth kit on the car too. Also a set of cams...

externally the head is the same, meaning the VIII intake/exhaust manifold will bolt up to the IX head w/out a problem. Internally however they are 'slightly' different.

Thats why you spend the extra money to get a AMS kit.

the funny fitting on the downpipe was a vband....(i don't think you use a gasket on the 4bolt side i know i didn't on my 5 bolt discharge) sucks that full race made the manifold fit like crap i have heard exellent things from them so i'm sure they will help you out or send you new stuff. it always sucks to be all pumped up about putting you new stuff on & your missing stuff or **** doesn't fit.

did I read that correctly? you didn't use a gasket between the exhaust housing on the turbo and the DP. I have the 5-bolt discharge housing on my 35r also...

are you leaking at all?