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here is a piece of an email from a friend at lotus.
the beauty of turbo charged cars (and especially new ones) is the wastegate. on cars built starting round 96, the wastegate had a duty-cycled solenoid that controlled the wastegate, and thus, the boost. if'n you look at the torque curve for your engine stock, you'd see it rise pretty normally till about 2200-2500rpm, then it would just flatten out till 6500 or so. that's the boost control. it modulates the wastegate so you have a wide torque plateau, and thus a wide power band = it feels fast. Now ECU upgrades to cars such as yours (or the 1.8T GTI or Audi A4 1.8T S4 2.7T) more than likely leave the wastegate closed a little longer, for more maximum boost. instant and easy hp (and torque). I wouldn't be worried too much about damage, because yours has electronic fuel injection, OBDII and possibly knock control, so it will shut you down before you hurt the engine.
40hp increase is fine - no problems there. My benz, however, went from 186hp naturally aspirated to probably 300 turbo charged. luckily, it has an air-fuel ratio sensor and a huge oil cooler. I would research the tuning firms that offer the chip upgrades, and make sure you're getting one that has dyno'd their chip. most do, some don't.
I'm not sure about the 9000 turbo. do you have an oilcooler? is it intercooled (i assume it is)? SAAB makes pretty robust stuff, so 40hp should be no problem. if you can find one, try 70-80hp. what's the displacement on that? 2.3l? 16valve right? 100hp/liter is no problem on a european motor. 110/120 is starting to get hairy on a non-turbo motor. you should be good for 110 or so, since your motor was turbo from the start.
I would try to do some before-and-after benchmarking if possible. eyeball with a wristwatch 0-60, 0-100 times. also 50-70 or 60-80mph times - that's the torque band.
enjoy.
p.s. the other upgrades (exhaust/intake etc.) won't give you the instant gratification that a chip would - because yours is a turbo. Naturally aspirated motors benefit from induction/exhaust tweaks more because the rely on pulses in the system for supercharging effects. also, bigger apertures allow the engine to breath easier. turbo push the air around, so there's not such a need for big tubes (although it doesn't hurt).
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