Over the autumn we had made various modifications to our CD Carlsson
track car and
were interested to see if there had been any change in power output.
We spoke to some
other club members and found that they too were keen to see what
outputs their modified
or standard Saabs were producing, so organised a morning of power
runs at Austec
Racing – a TVR specialist with a rolling road capable of measuring
power outputs up to
600bhp.
It was a bracing November morning when we arrived at the Austec
workshop in Crawley,
and at 9:00am, there were already a number of club members around.
Tim’s White CSE,
starting its screaming power run on the rollers meant that the hellos
had to wait for a few
minutes.
At the rolling road, each car is strapped onto a set of braked
rollers. After some calibration
runs, the car is accelerated in a high gear from low revs right
through to the red line and a
computer calculates how much power is being produced by the engine
throughout the rev
band. It is a very useful tool for quantifying the effect of modifications.
Our Track car only managed 269bhp, not much more than our last
power run, confirming
our belief that the T25 turbo is now the weakest link and the next
thing to be upgraded.
Matt’s 1994 Aero had been unpredictable since having an Abbott
ECU fitted. On the
morning of the power run it achieved 275bhp, but would not hold
more than 14psi of boost,
no-matter what we adjusted. This we later diagnosed as a leaking
intercooler and the car
drives well holding over 20psi of boost.
My 9000 CSE 2.3T Speedparts stage3 managed 267bhp, and we presume
this is down to
the same limitations as our track car.
Prize for the lowest power of the day went to Richard’s 9000SE
2.0T with just over 160bhp
– although I hear a deal has been struck we Saabflight to
remedy this. I can’t wait to see
the results.
Highest output went to Alan’s DIY special 9000 Aero fitted
with a GT28RS turbo; achieving
well over 300bhp (although he has since had to replace the gearbox).
I must also mention Toby’s Anniversary/Aero for achieving
299bhp purely on software
upgrades and Pete for bringing his M5 for us to compare notes on.
It was a really good opportunity to catch up with people, meet
some new faces and
hopefully find out something interesting about our cars. We will
be planning another rolling
road morning during the summer.
Report by Gareth Jones
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