Unhappy With Holley Sniper

7173Mustangs.com

Help Support 7173Mustangs.com:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

J-bird

New member
Joined
Oct 5, 2019
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Location
Westphalia ks
My Car
1st 1972 Mustang convertible Grabber Blue Argent Silver stripes. 351 CJ, C6, 325 rear gears. 2nd 2008 Shelby GT 500 650 horse at crank 562 at tires Ebony Black with Dark Alloy stripes. Charcoal and red interior.
[url=https://ibb.co/ZT4S9fL][img]https://i.ibb.co/pXVQq10/20190902-171616.jpg[/img][/url]
I purchased a pretty 1972 Grabber Blue Convertible Stang. Purchased through an auction house south of Chicago. Paid way to much for what I got. Thats not the story here. Npv 20 2019 took her to a mechanic friend of mine and is is an excellent certified mechanic. He said he could work on it on weekends. I had saved up and purchased several thousand bucks on parts. The most expensive of such was a Holley Sniper complete kit with distributor wires and linkage everything. The Holley EFI has been difficult at best. A Holley tec said it is wired right.. 361C starts but then stalls.. Holley was kind enough to send him a new ECU. NOW THE cleveland won't even start. Come on Holley let's get it together. I've spent over$2,000.00 on my mechanic on added labor above the quote.. he my mechanic used to have hair.. my next step is to buy a HEI distributor . If that doesn't work. Take it all off. Demand a total refund. And Holly can see me a new carb linkage and mechanical fuel pump for my added cost and trouble. Holley needs to give it up and quit selling EFI kits.

 
Very happy with mine, but install isn't as easy as they claim in their vids for sure.

I'd really ask your guy to check twice how he has set the IAC and its readings on the handheld, because it gave me too the prob you describe.
No ecu will fix that and it won't run fine till this isn't done correctly.

 
Okay, I have zero knowledge on these EFI installations. Personally I would not even bother with spending all that money on one unless this was my daily driver or used far more often than most of us are able to. A good carb set up properly might use a bit more fuel for sure, but I could buy a lot of gas for what one of those costs. Then the next thing I see all too often is HEI distributors. Again, my personal opinion and a pet peeve. WHY!! I would look more toward a good DuraSpark set up or a Pertronix II and coil in a stock distributor, curved correctly. You can do this yourself, buying the components, or get a DuraSpark done by a company like Performance Distributors. They build to YOUR engine specifications.

As I stress, this is not an area where I have any experience other than doing my own, but if I can help someone I see wanting to do something I would not do, then my 2 cents worth might be in order. At the end of the day, it's your car, your way. End of debate. 

 
I have the MSD Atomic, which is now owned by Holley, and will never go back to a carb. The only way I would ever go back is if the power out grows the system. It has made life so much simpler for a car that's driven mostly on weekends with trips throughout the week between home garage and storage garage. Just turn the key on wait a second or two and fire it up. No choke, no pumping of the pedal, etc... I can't speak for the sniper but we have the MSD on our two and three or four friends all have them. Now I have all the parts, new distributor and MSD box, to allow it to control the timing. I have chosen not to make that change for now because I have read so issues with that.  It just runs to good to mess with it at this point. Good luck

 
Roy, If you ever put all the MSD timing control stuff on please let us know the results. At that point it would be a 50 year old "modern" engine. With the heads you have the torque must be truly impressive. Chuck

 
@Stanglover "I could buy a lot of gas for what one of those costs."

The maths for fuel over here are 4 to 5 times less optimistic :)  And aside the money point, I can now for instance stay in garage during a cold start without risking to die within the next 3 minutes! That alone is priceless to me! :D

 
@Stanglover "I could buy a lot of gas for what one of those costs."

The maths for fuel over here are 4 to 5 times less optimistic :)  And aside the money point, I can now for instance stay in garage during a cold start without risking to die within the next 3 minutes! That alone is priceless to me! :D
@Fabrice,  There is no doubt EFI or Throttle Body injection, as it was called back in the late 70's early 80's, has a lot of benefits. I worked on air induction systems for them back then and the testing done proves they are better than carbs. From my point of view, they're just not worth the money for the relatively small gain in convenience and performance. That is just my point of view, no debate.

 
EFI systems need certain critical  inputs to the ECU and if the system does not have all the information (i.e TPS, 02, timing, etc, etc) it isn't going to cooperate.  Period.

I've been running EFI since 2006 on my 69 vert and the learning curve transition from carburetor to EFI has been a steep climb for my old school knowledge brain.  One of the most important lessons I learned is that out of the box bad components from Holley are rare.  Missed & incorrect connections by the installer probably cause 95% of poor or non-running systems.  Talking to a Holley Tech will not guarantee the system has been installed properly because if the installer says "I did that right", the tech has to accept that as correct, even if it is not.

I've spent far, far, far more than any "savings from efficiency" I might have realized, but I've also gained a new (to me) body of knowledge about EFI as well as  being humbled by things like a simple loose connection that morphed into hundreds of man-hours and $$ until it was found.  The point I'm trying to make is these system do work, but sometimes a complete 'step back / take it apart and start over' approach is needed to find simple little thing(s) that prevented the system from functioning.

 
" The point I'm trying to make is these system do work, but sometimes a complete 'step back / take it apart and start over' approach is needed to find simple little thing(s) that prevented the system from functioning."  VERY GOOD advice! Chuck

 
For me, this has been a very informative discussion and how we/I learn. Still not for me with the type and amount of driving I do.

The one issue that has not been addressed is J-Bird's thought on adding an HEI distributor. My comment was to go to a DuraSpark system, but learning as I go, that may not be a sufficient system to be compatible with the EFI. It would seem to me that the MSD would be a better choice. Am I right in the interest of further learning?

 
For me, this has been a very informative discussion and how we/I learn. Still not for me with the type and amount of driving I do.

The one issue that has not been addressed is J-Bird's thought on adding an HEI distributor. My comment was to go to a DuraSpark system, but learning as I go, that may not be a sufficient system to be compatible with the EFI. It would seem to me that the MSD would be a better choice. Am I right in the interest of further learning?
I can't answer that to be absolutely sure on it. The reason being 3 of the 5 we have installed have 1 mallory distributor with a MSD box, 1 MSD set up on both, 1 69 Camaro with a Chevy distributor with MSD box, and 1 69 Camaro and 57 Chevy with stock distibutor and NO box

None controlling timing

 
Last edited by a moderator:
@Stanglover No worries m8, if carb is doing fine and you're happy with it no prob with that! 

I was mainly reacting to J bird's post where Holley gets a bit easy the full load, while it's possible there were some defects, I know by installing one myself that it's a pain to do so on our cars and quite easy to do it wrong despite how they have simplified the process, worse, it can easily be unsafe.

@Bill73Ragtop you told it way better than me!

I've btw used it today and drove 50 kms ( kuz my 73 finally passed the tech control WOOHOOO) and can tell you that this thing rocks!! Still shaking lol :D

 
Back
Top