haha febi, don't get me wrong there's a lot of power to be had, and the 2.1 transformed the car, just not particularly in terms of peak power. it picked up so much better though and pulled so much more srtongly from lower rpms.
On the chip and smog issue, my car has ITBs, a 2.1 etc and the idle has only been tuned by me using my wideband and timing adjusted to get a nice idle. it makes very little emissions at idle, i was surprised by the margins by which it got through the MOT (yearly test) here in the UK.
dude, fwiw i'd stick in the m44 crank for that bit more displacement. although they're not fully counterbalanced etc, that also means they're light, and they're proved strong by the amount of guys with turbos etc not having any trouble. just my opinion, am sure you'll get just as many praising the m42 forged fully counterbalanced crank over the m44 one. guess it depends how high you're going to rev too.