Its not bad thinking as long as the housing is all ok, the main seals on both sides of my turbo where covered in burnt oil and on startup there was a fair amount of blue smoke that came out as it fired out the oil sitting in the turbo.
Its a pain to fit the turbo, you have to prime it first with engine oil when you fit the new one and I had to get the old one out from the bottom of car and requires a lot of jiggling to get it out. Installation is the same, through the bottom of the car, with a new primed turbo and the oil feed poured all over me so I was really unimpressed with that.
I also got the X8R manifold, when it turned up my wife took the delivery as I was at work and she was like 'What the hell is it that weighs that much!' hahaha... Cast Iron Manifold my dear...
You can get X8R shipped all the way down there?
I have some photos of me doing it, but truth is I was fighting getting it done in time, outside, its not that cold at the moment in the UK, around 9c but daylight is only 8am to 4pm-ish so it was kinda a rush. One thing you need is time to do a turbo, otherwise if you make a mess of it it can be a bit of an issue.
I am going to hold on to my E53 for a couple more years then get a decent F15 as I was never that keen on the e70 so its well worth the time and cost for me to keep the old truck running.