Haltech Rebel VS. Holley Terminator X - Which Budget LS ECU is Best?

Since Holly Terminator ecu come out of HP tuners we don't know. I don't really know much about it, but I saw some ads on Facebook today for Link ECUs that also offer some LS specific packages, but the one that seems to be the most interesting to specifically target Terminator X is the new Haltech ECU. and I think it's called The Rebel, so in this video we'll talk a little bit about my opinion on what I've seen and found so far, nevermind, we'll take a look at the specs to compare it to what Terminator X offers and then We'll take a look at the software and compare it in that regard.

I'll be completely honest. I know almost nothing about

haltech

. I've never really used it. I searched the software for 10 15. minutes about an hour ago and that's the extent of my knowledge, dummy, but every person I've ever talked to in my entire life has sent me messages and questions about all of this, so it seems at least one option interesting enough to investigate. to see what it's all about now as almost every video on this entire channel is related to Holly EFI, you even have a Holly EFI training course. Black Friday is right around the corner, so if you want early access to the Black Friday deals, click the link in the description and I can send you a notification once we have it ready, but ultimately, Since I'm going to assume that most people who watch this channel are familiar with what Holly is and what Holly offers, let's just look at this from Haltech's point of view and compare in that sense, so from the At first I wouldn't say that Haltech is simply aimed at the entry level.

It is a type of public. I would say they target Holly Terminator very specifically. X And ​​you can even see that in part of marketing and every time you launch a new product that will try specifically competing with something else, you will obviously do everything possible to be at least a little better and the greatest inconvenience with Terminator X is that only We have four inputs and four outputs and with htech it seems like we have a little more than that, so we'll go into detail about that here in a minute now, although I think htech is specifically aimed at the Terminator XC crowd, I still think there's enough difference between the two to make it easy enough for people to make a decision in

which

direction they want to go.

I think part of what has made Holly so popular and I think they have done a very good job at this is that they have created an ECU that is extremely easy to use and easy to navigate, but at the same time it is still very capable and you can get it to do almost everything you want it to do and once you take a look at the htech software, I would say there are a lot of people who won't be able to understand it and won't be able to use it. That's as easy as Terminator If you know what you're doing but you're already intimidated by what Terminator $1.99 might not be as popular among high-tech things as in theory, if someone is actually going to go in and do a good job fine-tuning one of these, it'll probably take a good amount of time, so I see what everyone is saying. has been talking online comparing these two ecu's, probably the number one thing is people are commenting on the way holly generally handles their tech support and the way htech generally handles their tech support and the size of these two companies It's so drastically different that I don't think many people take this into consideration, but I actually bought my Dino at Haltech in Kentucky.

Mainline is made in Australia and htech is an Australian company so they sent it to

haltech

USA and I picked it up. up and when I was there I think there were maybe three or four employees and most of those guys were handling tech support basically with htech, it seems like you call, you talk to someone, they can even log into your computer and there's usually a little bit more an intimate experience with the tech side of things, but on the other hand, Holly is doing so much volume that they probably have hundreds of tech support people, so you can call, you might be on hold for a long time and it's like anything else if you call when not busy you may get through quickly but if you call when very busy you may have long wait times now if this ECU takes off for Haltech and now they need to hire 700 more people than tech support, so that could all change, but as of now, Hal is a much smaller company, so you'll probably have, like I said, a little more of an intimate experience if you need tech support or help, so before we film this video i thought about calling htech and just talking to someone directly, but i'd rather shove a six pack of grenades up my ass.

I'm actually trying to get through the rest of my life without talking on the phone, so I did some research online and talked to some friends and a few other people I know do htech, so any of you who went to PRI and talked to htech first hand, you may have a better knowledge of this than me, so if I understand something wrong, it's just what I found through the little research I've done, so don't come burn down my house if I say something Wrong, okay, so here's what we came up with: This ECU, like the Terminator It looks like the target price for this high-tech ECU and harness will be around $1,500,

which

, if I remember correctly, was where the Terminator even a little cheaper but I know they have had some price increases over the years so I'm not sure exactly what the price is now although I deal with Holly all day every day I don't sell a a lot of things and ironically I tried to order something from Holly yesterday and since I don't do much volume it seems like my distributor account has been closed so isn't that something to keep in mind with Halltech?

We're not going to get the 3 and 1/2 inch touch screen, so there's a little bit of a price difference, but what you can do when you set up your Wizard and everything is that apparently they'll have a phone app and you can connect to the ECU wirelessly now. I have used other ecus in the past that have the same type of wireless phone connectivity and when it works it is great, but sometimes it can be a big annoyance when it doesn't work it will probably show up. I'm my age here, but I'd rather stick a cable into the computer and connect that way, but as long as it works it should be great.

The good thing is that it should make updates a lot easier for a lot of people I know by taking out the SD card and erasing all the f files and putting all the junk back in and reloading everything with Terminator X, a lot of people really struggle with that, so if htech does this correctly this could make it a lot easier, the Haltech ECU does this. It doesn't have automatic transmission control, like the Terminator X Max does now. If you look on the hch website it says automatic transmission control is coming soon or something, but looking at the ECU and harness it doesn't look like there will be provisions for it, so I'm guessing there will probably be a secondary box to add the control automatic transmission which depending on how you want to look at it could be great, so if you bought the ECU and don't you don't need the automatic transmission control and you can buy a box to add to it.

That's kind of nice. If you buy a Terminator if that's how they're going to do it, so that's something to keep in mind, uh, the other thing at any time. Anyone, it doesn't matter if it's car parts or whatever, whenever someone says something is coming soon, you never really know what that means, that could mean it's coming soon in 6 weeks or it could mean it's coming soon in 6 years old, so I probably wouldn't jump. about this if i wanted to do an automatic transmission until that functionality was actually available because again you may have no idea how long you will have to wait for that, as i understand htech will use the NSP software. have your own firmware for the ECU, which I think will limit what the software is capable of, which makes a lot of sense and like Terminator to use a Bosch 4.9 sensor, so you will use the same O2 sensor between the two.

Now what I'm not sure about is that Halac actually has can based O2 modules, like if you wanted to put 802 in your car or wanted to do bank to bank O2, you can add the daughter modules to this ECU, which I don't understand why Holly hasn't offered that yet so it looks like you're going to have that functionality with the Haltech now I'm not sure with those boxes if at that point you could run it as an ntk sensor. I'm not familiar enough with the Haltech line to be able to tell you about that, but I think in the base configuration I've been told it will only be 4.9 and given the price is what it is, it makes a lot of sense because the NTK sensors are significantly more expensive when I was at the World Cup final the other day at the Haltech exhibition. they actually had one of these systems, they had the wiring harness and everything and at first glance I didn't even think this was the ECU.

I had heard they had introduced an entry level ECU, but this one looks like their Was it the R3 R5? No I don't know their part numbers or their systems but it seems like the ECUs have like built in pdms so I didn't pay much attention at first and then I kind of went back and looked I was like oh wait that's it, that being said It looks like it has a PDM built in but it doesn't, however it does have the big power and ground cables for the battery working. to the ECU and again as I understand it the pre-configured things like the injectors, coils, radiator fans and those main items will be controlled directly from the ECU which means you won't have any additional fuses or relays so that He's really kind.

It's a nice touch, it just simplifies things a little bit on the Holly harness that you buy, like they have fuse holders and relays that are dangling, so this will clean that up a little bit. One thing worth pointing out with the power cables. I'm not sure what size cables they require you to connect to the EC to run all this extra stuff, but I hope they come with or at least you can purchase pre-crimped secondary cables for these connections, as I've seen. The way some of these guys crimp larger diameter wires, I mean, it looks like they use a butter knife and a mallet, so hopefully they'll offer something like that so that way the guys have decent connections in the ECU, pretty much There is no worse connection in the car than having a poor connection directly to the power and ground of the ECU, so one thing that will work in HK's favor here is that Haltech has been around since H Tech might even have invented the Fuel injector.

They've been around forever, so even though this is a new ECU for them, it's not a completely new ECU manufacturer, sometimes, there are almost always growing pains associated with that, so assuming they haven't spent a lot of money in the hardware inside the ECU. In theory the software should be pretty stable and again they have been making ECUs since the car was invented so the hardware in theory should be good as long as they don't get cheaper so I think we would like to hope that it will be a pretty solid option out of the box and now another of the biggest advantages of Holly is that there is an infinite amount of information available to you, like I said, I have a whole course, there are 13,000 Facebook groups dedicated to Holly, everyone uses Holly, everyone is a Holly distributor, but there is so much more that I suspect it will be much easier to find the information you are looking for without having to call Haltech directly.

I know I've seen some stuff from Haltech as far as YouTube and videos and stuff like that, so there might be a little more support like that. I'm sure they have some forums, if people still use them there are probably some Facebook groups, they probably have all the same ones. things, instead of so much, there will be so much, so the amount of information that is available with Holly is actually very good, you can always find any informationwhatever you need, whether you need to talk to someone or find them. online or whatever, but at the end of the day with htech, if you know they're closed and you can't talk to them directly, I just don't think you'll find that much information and with that being said, it's probably the easiest way for me to Putting the software differences into perspective, this is the first time I used Holly.

I simply plugged the ECU into the car, turned it on, and was able to tune the car from start to finish without having to call tech support. to look for manuals, the exception is that I had to look up how to set up the boost control with the CO2 Dome pressure sensor, eh, but even adjusting the boost control like I didn't, I didn't read any manuals, I just figured it out, but look the Haltech software is pretty simple, but there's a lot more there and some of the writing is a little different than what I'm used to, so I think the learning curve with the htech is going to be significantly harder and maybe even harder. is not even the word, it will just take a lot longer to learn the ins and outs of this.

I know a lot of people are a little intimidated by the Terminator software xof and if That's where you are, if you look at the Haltech software it's probably going to be 10 or 20 times more complex and there's a lot more stuff and one thing I like about Holly especially if you are new to this. is that Holly is going to log every channel, so if you record your car and you're not even sure what you're watching, all the data is there and you can review it like where with Halltech and many other ECUs you need to choose which channels you want register in advance, so the nice thing about this is that you can choose the registration rate for each of those channels, but if you don't you register a channel and then you go back to review that registration and you want to know what you know you want to watch, be it Whatever channel it is, if you didn't register it ahead of time then it just won't be there and sometimes that can be really annoying because you don't register certain channels because you don't necessarily think you need them, but when you need them they're not there. and that's a little bit of a pain, so that's one thing that I've always liked Holly because she just records every channel.

It may take a while to download the ECU files, but at least everything you want is there. Well, let's take a look at some of the specifications. Oh, we have. I didn't talk about the harness, but everyone is familiar with Holly's harness. Now there are elements of this harness that are really nice in comparison and if you look here you can see that these cables are kind of looped and this image is definitely taken from the Best angle and a very specific layout, there is an eyelet in the firewall that I It seemed nice, where this loom ends.

They have a heat shrink adhesive line which is nice, some of the labels are pretty good, some maybe not. It's as nice as some of the others, it's not a big deal, but the big difference is that if you look at this picture, probably if you follow this back it's probably hanging right behind the ECU, but if you look at how big it looks and bulky. in this heat shrink material here and then you see a coiled wire, there's a big chunk like this, like this big huge section where all the wiring looks like this and it looks like the wiring is like spaghetti. all over the place, so I don't know if it was just a prototype and maybe the production versions will be a little nicer, but other than that kind of bulky place that I didn't think really looked that good, so the harness looks pretty good and I think adding the firewall grommet was a nice touch and this is what I was talking about with the power and ground posts directly on the ECU and I don't know if the case is metal or plastic, if it's metal. so you know it's obviously better than the Terminator HE.

Whether this is simply because they only offer the harness for Gen 3 and Gen 4S or if the actual ECU simply won't be configurable for other platforms, I have now had countless customers switch from little black fors to ls and from ls. to coyotes and everything else, so another plus for Terminator to you. We will only be able to use it with an LS, so apparently this is the

best

, fastest and easiest way to get the LS swap up and running. It's probably subjective, but I guess from a marketing point of view it can't be said to be the

best

way. of getting your car up and running, uh, this part here is very good, uh, it will work with the dashboards as you would expect, but it will also work with the pdms and all the other can based stuff that Haltech offers, so that's it I think I know someone who uses a smart wire with Terminator than there is, but basically we have eight injectors, high impedance, only eight coils, so like Terminator , put all three in there to make it look like there are more than there really are, but there is a user-definable 12 volt outlet that Terminator two more than Terminator X.

Same with the entries, list the dedicated ones. like they are more than what they are since you can't use them for anything else, but if I read your terminology here correctly, it looks like we have two user definable ones. I'm assuming these are like 5vt inputs and then it has four pulse inputs as well as its digital inputs for speed sensors and flex fuel, uh, but then it also says it can be programmed for Avi, so again, I'm not familiar with Halex terminology, but I guess this means we essentially have like four digital inputs, two 5Vt inputs or you can configure them all as six 5Vt inputs, so again it looks like we're going to have two more than with Terminator as I understand it, you can run an expansion box through the can. to get more with this, same goes here, oh yeah look, here it says LSU 4.9 for the integrated only, but you can use the expansion modules to run up to 10, one per cylinder and then an additional one per bank, 10 total and so this ignition switch input is a little strange.

I assume it's just a 12 volt input to power the ECU. It's a little strange, they would list that as an input it is USBC networkable and has built-in Wi-Fi which the Terminator X doesn't have, uh, these two here, three here, are actually quite advantageous. We have onboard data logging for the htech ECU which we don't have on board for the Terminator, you actually have to do it via the laptop or the SD card on the handheld so that's a nice touch and then there's a sensor integrated four-bar map, so it will save you between $100 and $150. If you're a turbo guy using the ccus you won't have to buy a map sensor anymore, the Terminator on Terminator features, we have an easy setup wizard, ah man, I don't like that word-for-word terminology.

Hol is doing it, it's a little dirty, drive by wire, uh, Flex Fuel, uh, the KN control on this, in theory, I haven't used it, but I guess it'll be better than Holly. I'm not a big fan of Holly doesn't control any variable cam controls here it's automatic transmission coming soon and then here's another long term learning so you have a learning table again. I don't necessarily like that they use the exact same words that Holly uses in that. Please note that I found this article here. I guess this is where they were interviewing someone from halac at PRI or SEMA, whatever this paragraph here is, you don't actually need to connect the ECU to a PC to use it, you can do it and you should do it at some point and this is from What I always talk about with Holly's stuff: the assistant is great at getting you up and running, but you're leaving a lot on the table if you don't dive into the laptop. software-based, you can do a lot more, so it seems like Haltech is essentially on the same page as me.

Do you know that in this case you would be using the app on your phone instead of the 3 and 1/2 touch screen? Up and running and finally access the software based on the laptop and then we have all these other things, uh, that can read all of that, but it can basically do all of that with Holly, uh, this is kind of interesting, this says that. it has traction control, uh, but then it has no driveshaft or engine RPM target, so you'll probably have a percentage difference in front versus rear wheel speed, but you're not really going to like it. drive into a corner like you would with the way Holly does her traction control, which is very recently a paid upgrade that's now available for Terminator X.

You've always been able to do some kind of traction control of your own. So again, for an entry level ECU, it's not a deal breaker, but it is something to keep in mind. If you read on their site, it says they are trying to have this ready by the end of the year. I already mentioned this. looks like one of their other R series ecus, this is a nice touch where it says it will basically work with all their other can based stuff, so it says you can use up to four of their pdm1 16, it says they plan to include automatic transmission in 2024 there are no plans for other engines other than the ls and the price has not been confirmed yet but from what I heard I said it's around 1,500 dollars okay let's quickly dive into the software we'll just take a look .

On a couple of things and then we'll finish this off nicely. If you've never used Haltech software before, then you have exactly the same amount of experience as me. I can't wait to get home and stay all night. trying to figure out the damn thing from the beginning, all these icons at the top, a lot of these seem to be just basic Windows commands like copy and paste and stuff like that, so I like the way Holly placed her stuff . "This works a little bit better and then we have these things like a drop down tree here, which again I like the way Holly does this better, but there's a lot more stuff inside this software that I don't know how they did it." It's not the worst, but they have this thing here that I really like, where you can essentially enable and disable a bunch of things, so if you're not using knock, then you can just turn it off and then it will take it. away from this tree, but you can see how many more things there are and each of these things that you can enable has dropdown menus like down from there, so there's a lot more things here, another thing that if we go through all the Over here you can see that we actually have warnings and diagnostics, which is really good.

I will say though that it seems like every car I've had comes to the dyno with htech always has error codes and it's almost always for Cam and crank and I assume they get the codes while the engine is cranking so basically the warning it's always on that there's air and when that happens then you get to the point where I just almost completely ignore it so I haven't had a high tech car on the Dyno in a long time so I don't know if maybe that's been cleared up or what, but anyway, having the actual air messages I think is a nice touch, so this uses a five based fuel model and a lot of the intakes and stuff are adjustable, so yeah you right click you get all kinds of different things.

You can change all the breakpoints and the different types of access there are. More adjustability, Holly locks you in a lot of things that in many cases are for your own good and then if we press this D key here, it gives us different views and if you've ever tuned like a VFC, I guess. you can do that here, so we also have a fast Lambda which, if you've ever used as a motch, it's well, basically, like if you're driving in a Cell, this is our Lambda table, it's going to be here in our main fuel table. but if you are driving in a cell and there is a 4% difference in fuel, if you simply press Q while you are in that cell then it will make the adjustments for you.

It's actually a nice touch. I wish Holly had that now. There is one thing I don't like, but yes. I think it's one of those things where everyone thinks they can improve their own ECU, which is why there are so many ECU companies, but I love that Holly's design is fixed and exactly the same on every car, but When you get on these, you can move all of themthese things so you can see that there are things hidden behind this and if you've ever used like I'm every time you move one of these things, then you go to like the next page and it gives you this warning if you want to save them in SA, but gives you this option to set up multiple similar pages so you can have 20 different pages for all kinds of different things. things so that part is good so I think if I were to make my own ECU this main one would be fixed just like Holly is and then we would have these extra pages for the things we wanted to see so it's not a It's a deal breaker, but it's annoying when you want to log into someone else's computer and it's designed totally differently.

You know, I don't know where anything else is. This is something I asked Holly to do and they haven't done it yet. Just in one of the recent updates they gave us this where we click on this open space here it will highlight the entire table. Which I also asked them to do, which is good if you click here like zero. highlight that entire row or if you click here it will highlight this entire column. It's a nice touch, but I haven't found a way to enlarge the table, so it's annoying when it's not all. visible uh so like other ecus you just press a button and it becomes like full screen.

I don't know, it might be there, I just don't know how to do it and then you can always do like another tab here and create it. full size or whatever, even then it looks like it might not fit on the screen and we have a map comparison feature that Holly does too, um, so that's good and Jesus, sometimes the way I label things is a little wild, but it seems when you save a map or create a map it will actually put everything in a folder for you, which is nice. Holly just downloads it to her generic Holly directory so I like that but a lot of the big difference is going to be in the configuration of a lot of things so you can see that right here in the idle control there is significantly more adjustability and in You're actually going to set up all your Clos Loop stuff and here's all your P ID for the idle control and here's the power control, which is kind of nice.

Holly is fixed at 8° but it looks like you can change them to whatever you want and it gives you wiring examples here within the software which I think is nice and then for the boost control we have an open and closed circuit and then you can control it off of manifold pressure or wastegate pressure, so there's a lot more adjustability within the boost control, um, so a lot of the things are going to be configured more for you, but one Once you go into those folders, there's going to be a lot more adjustability from there, so you can like all of this here just gives you a better view of how many things are in here. and like I say, some of the terminology can be a little strange, like I have no idea what zero demand was, which apparently is like idle, uh, looking at these RPM breakpoints and stuff, it seems like if we get to F1, it will bring Let's go to the Help menu, which is amazing.

Most DCS do that, but this seems to do a good job. If you click on similar vehicle features, you can see that there are some different interesting things. I don't necessarily know how much of all this. It will be functional on this entry level ECU, but it could work and then it looks like the data logger. Here's what I was talking about, how you actually have to choose all the channels and you can see here that this list of channels is infinite. long, so you need to know how to configure all of this, uh, if you want to see it, if you don't configure it, then it won't log it and then it looks like we can turn on logging as well, which is Well, I didn't even see a sample data log here that I can open, but from what I remember seeing the Halltech data logger is a little clunky and I'm used to Holly's stuff, so from what I see.

From what I've seen, I'd say I prefer Holly's recorder, but if I get more familiar with it my opinion on it might totally change, but I definitely like that Holly records all the channels for you, so I think that's enough look at this software. Obviously, you can go and explore all of this yourself by simply downloading the NSP software on the Halex website. Another thing that is good here if you are looking for help. There is remote help so they can log in directly to your computer. It will actually automatically check for updates that may be good or bad and luckily sometimes you have the option to turn off automatic updates which can cause problems and like I said you can configure all of this however you want but it usually just ends.

It looks like a big mess so I like fixed layouts most of the time so if you go to the hch website go to downloads and here is the NSP software. I'm sure once the software is available, the actual software will be available. There will be some extra here, but this will at least give you an idea of ​​what the software looks like. Just click Download here. Probably not the best tour of the software, but again, I'm not very familiar with it. I think it's going to be a little harder to navigate for a lot of people compared to the Terminator It's a pretty interesting kind of situation that we're in and considering that we now have multiple companies trying to compete for the same customer, so to speak, competition can drive interesting things to happen, so I'm excited to see where this goes.

I think it will be quite difficult. for Haltech to make a dent in what Holly is going on, especially in this area, since every car has Holly on it and I probably get like three phone calls a year for htech, and you know why I'm not very familiar with it so , who knows if it becomes super popular then maybe we'll play with it a bit more but we'll have to see where it works so you can get a couple more inputs and outputs with the Halltech, the harness has some features that may be a little better , you have the whole wireless system, if you like it, the four bar map sensor is good, the internal logging is good, the ability to add some of the extra components from the can is Well, I think it will all come down to the software, and if you're willing to learn the high-tech software or know how to pay someone to do it, at the end of the day, I think it's all of them.

We're both going to do the same thing, there's just different ways to do it, but I think with both options they'll be great for a lot of people and it'll be interesting to see how popular, if at all, the high-tech stuff becomes, so I'll probably try to get one. of these ecus just to play with it, get familiar with it in case it blows up and becomes super popular and I need to be able to tune it. stuff, so I'm not a Halltech dealer so I'm not even sure where I would get one, but okay, for now that's all I know about this htech ECU, so I guess if it becomes popular and we get a thousand people are knocking on the door wanting their stuff tuned up then maybe we'll make more videos about this or if Holly still continues to rule the world and this ECU doesn't take off then who knows maybe there won't be much more but As always I appreciate See me and see you next time.