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Stock the 2008 Saab 9-3 Aero V-6 puts out 280 HP at 5500 RPM and 295 ft lbs of torque at 2150 RPM.
The ECU tune for my Saab 9000 was definately my favorite mod and by far the best bang for the buck. It transformed that car into a solid 2nd gear wheel squeeler. I had to get the ECU tune for the 9-3. The V-6 9-3 does not use the Trionic system like most other saabs. Instead it uses a GM system, the ME9.6. The tuning process is not as well understood. There is an entire website dedicated to tuning the Trionic system. The ME9.6 is new to the Saab community but thankfully, 4 years after the car was made, there are many options out there for getting ECU upgrade.
I narrowed it down to two choices, JZWTuning and VTuner. Both products are well respected by the general Saab community. In the end I decided to go with VTuner. I actually would have perferred to go with JZW's tune but at this point John still must have the ECU in hand in order to apply the tune. I couldn't have my car down for days to a week while the tune was applied. That left me with VTuner. They send you a HPTuners device. It allows reading and writing to the ECU. It works with many GM products. The Corvette guys swear by it. Unfortunately the Saab system is different than most GM systems. You really have to reverse engineer the ROM in order tweak the Saab. This is exactly what Brian at VTuner has done. With HPTuners you can do a full read of the ECU to a binary file. You send him the file and he sends you back one that that is modified for your vehicle.
The nice thing is that you can modify some parameters that the HPTuners software recognizes on the Saab. I dont know that I would ever do that, but it is nice to know that I could. More importantly, the HPTuners device is also a code reader and data logger. This proved very handy in determing which of my ignition coils was bad. You can do full virtual guage dashboards showing all sorts of values.
So far I have only put on about 2 miles on the new tune. It definately spools the turbo up higher. I can actually hear the air movement, something you could never hear before. The car gets up and goes very well. I need more time to do a full comparison.
Stock
HP - 280 @ 5500 RPM
Torque - 295 ft lbs @ 2150
VTuner Stage 0
HP - 328 @ 4500 RPM
Torque - 405 ft lbs @ 3750
280 @ 5500 RPM
295 @ 2150 RPM Pictures
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