I bought my 03 Evo with what I was told are "06 struts" which doesn't really tell me much. So my question is are there any identifiers on the outside of the struts that would tell me if they are in fact MR struts?

 

if they're yellow, they're MR (Bilstein's) . if they're black, they're normal (KYB's)

 

^Exactly. I'll keep my fingers crossed that you've got some billys under there