Well, here in Massachusetts, legislation has recently passed allowing for recreational use of marijuana. While I am not a partaker of said substances, I felt like the timing was good enough to justify a cheesy blog title. As they say, desperate times, desperate measures!
Since I had previously done the Vermont Tuning Stage 0 upgrade to my ’11 NG 9-5 Aero, the wife had begun “asking” when the tuner would be providing some additional zip to her beautiful (and rare) Java NG 9-5. For recreational use only, of course! Notice how women have a way of “asking” that really is more of an instruction? Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course. 🙂
Not long after that discussion, the gang at NE/Saab had asked me handle setting up a group purchase with Brian at Vermont Tuning. So, with a nice discount as incentive, I took the time to add her car to the list. While her car is the 2.0 Turbo4 with a different ECM than my 2.8 Aero, the good news is the same EFI Live ALDL port adapter works for both cars. So with the group purchase finalized, Brian sent me the updated info for her tune and we loaded it in. The tune takes it from 220 HP/258 FT/LBS to 270 HP/295 FT/LBS. Passing is much better, and the car feels like it should have come from the factory. This really isn’t a surprise, since the Stage 0 is the same exact power rating the Buick Regal GS and Cadillac ATS had, so the hardware was obviously already capable. But it was GM’s way of giving Saab the shaft, yet again.
Tunes are great, but if your ignition system was getting tired, you’ll know it! The worn plugs will have their gap opened up, and misfires are the result. Do it long enough and you can smoke the coil packs too. Your car will go from inspired motivation to the equivalent get-up-and-go of your local hippie after a few bong hits… not really what we’re looking for here. So I decided to proactively tackle the plugs before loading in the tune. Brian suggested the NGK Iridium IX model LTR5IX-11 gapped around 0.80 to 0.85mm (0.032 to 0.0335 inch) and they were pretty close to that out of the box.
I took the time to carefully clean up the coil packs to look for any cracks or breaks. I’m told you can’t grow recreational crops with bad lighting, and you can’t make horsepower with bad ignition! I torqued the plugs in to the factory spec of 15 ft/lbs on all four plugs (you use a torque wrench too, right…?) and put a little dielectric grease on the coil pack seating points to help prevent moisture incursion and facilitate easy future removal.
Lastly, in the words of Jeremy Clarkson: “Looking good is more important than looking where you’re going!”. With that in mind, I decided to do a good cleanup on the Turbo4 engine bay. Looking good and running even better… but why do I have the urge for a big bag of Cheetos all of a sudden…?
What On Earth Is An NG 9-5? 