Why I Ditched Holley Sniper EFI

Hey what's up? I'm Jimmy, welcome back to Timeless Steel Garage. Listen. I don't think I've gotten as much hate mail as I did for going from being a

sniper

to a carburetor so I'm here to tell you about my story, let's get into it right away, here's the deal, I'm a retired lunch so I'm going to go over this like a mission report and tell you my story, so if you guys have been paying attention to this 64 Riviera, behind me, was a gift to my wife for our 10th anniversary, another dad had a 65 and some of his Best memories with your dad were the '65 crit with a 401 nailhead.

Now this is a '64 with a 425 close enough, okay? I wanted to make this for my wife and I wanted it to be easy to drive the car to the grocery store, so in my brain I thought, "Well, let me try this." Holly Sniper reached out to a couple of friends and several friends said yes, the technology is much better than 10 years ago. These things work very well. I was skeptical. I told you guys, but I told them to try it anyway. The funny thing is that if you see the previous version. videos, the damn thing ran great with a carburetor, so you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, it's played here, so anyway I like to support American companies when I can.

Holly is a great company. They are located in Bowling. Green Kentucky, which is two and a half hours on a bad day from my house, so I was happy to support them. I'm a big fan of the Holley carbs, the 4150 carburetor. You know, you're an Edelbrock guy or a Holly guy. I think they are both good carbs and I actually prefer the Carter Slash Edelbrock design on this car and most trams now when you're building horsepower I prefer Holley 4150 so anyway we can address that later, so I decided uh because they're so close to me that I went to their website they have a great website um and the point of this video I'm going to tell you the good, bad and ugly experiences right, just this is my story.

There are so many Fanboys out there that no matter what I say, people will jump on it or love one of the two, but I went to Holly's site. Holly has a great site, super easy to use, her prices are practically fixed, no matter where you buy her things, unless you are a company and you are in your distributor for them, if you buy it as a customer, her prices are practically fixed and If you buy from their website it is free shipping, they are very close to me. I was just straight up so I went ahead and ordered their uh Master kit with a black Carter style four barrel throttle body unit and then decided to order their Hyperspark full ignition system along with it.

So it was like three grand, all said and done, but the basic

sniper

unit is about $1,500, so I ordered it real easy. I immediately received a receipt in the email. I received a shipping verification email and honestly it showed up in two days. Can't. complain about that plus one point um so I bought the stuff took the car to the shop and started taking it apart to put it back together now if you look at most YouTube channels a lot of those guys are sponsored. I am not sponsored. I'm just a normal guy, I pay for my own stuff, but they make it look like they put it together in a day.

I'm here to tell you that they won't do it on a day that can wait like a weekend. of work, but in my case, because I was separating the 64 and doing a bunch of other things at the same time, it took me about three days, but like I said, I took breaks, I did the disc brake conversion, I dropped the gas tank. I did all sorts of things, I watched the videos above if you want to see them, but really the thing is this is a universal product so you can't expect Holly to sell a kit that will work for everyone, it has all the basic things you need , but it doesn't have everything and everyone will have different things they need to order that don't come with the kit, so just a quick review of what I did to this car to see the stock pressure.

The line on this car is 3 8 inch and a stock return line on this car I think is a quarter inch which brings me to my next point: the instructions that come with the kit are abbreviated and if you go to the Holly's website there is like an 80 page Guide, it has 80 pages that are much more detailed and better instructions, so if you are watching this video and you buy a Sniper One or a Sniper Two, regardless, go to Holly's website and buy your complete guide. I'm installing this but the short instructions don't say anything about it but the guide instructions say that the sniper car requires 3 8 pressure 3 8 return so knowing that the easiest way to do it was to just use rubber for the pressure. and rubber for the return now it comes with the E85 ethanol high pressure fuel hose and it comes with I think 25 feet, this thing is a canister and it wasn't enough so I ordered another roll, now another ruler that costs like eighty dollars , so that's one.

What I had to buy was basically, uh, the hardlines on the car were in a great location and I didn't want to do it so I couldn't redo the carburetor so I kept the original hardline for pressure and ran a whole rubber. line for return and if you watch the previous videos I'll show you all of this I chose to drop the tank uh I drilled a hole in it for a return I cleaned it I replaced the center while it was there all in the videos you guys I've seen and basically installed a return line completely new with rubber clamps that I had to buy self tapping sheet metal screws that I had to buy and a complete set of uh basically the original fuel line that the kit comes with.

It was enough to run the return, but I still needed more fuel line for the pressure side and some venting possibilities in the fuel tank. Etc. Now remember that when you buy this kit, Holly sells it for use on any car on the market so you can I don't expect it to have everything you're going to need, so I turned on the fuel system. I cleaned the tank very well. I bled the fuel system. I purged the lines because even if it's new rubber, you'll have dust and stuff there mounted the fuel pump inline on the rail.

I didn't choose to do an intake pump just because I was trying to get the car ready for a road trip as quickly as possible. I recommend it if you have time at any time. When doing an EFI conversion it is always best to put a pump in the tank so I chose to use the pump that comes with the kit, it comes with a pre-filter and a post-filter, both are very important that I installed. Those, while I was taking the engine apart, I noticed a bunch of gaskets that needed to be replaced. I replaced all of those. unit on the intake super easy if you can Bolt on the carburetor you can Bolt on the hollow unit now this is where I had to buy a few more things so I think any good EFI system or even any good carburetor any car I build point I like put a fuel gauge on the inlet of whatever style of fuel system I'm using, so I typically put a fuel gauge on the regulator and put a fuel gauge on the carburetor or the throttle body of a throttle body. injection or the fuel rail, sorry, because it's just for tuning for road emergencies, like if you have fuel gauges, it's immediate, you know if you're getting fuel pressure, it's very easy to diagnose, so obviously the Holly kit It doesn't come with that, so I had to buy a couple of accessories I had to buy a meter.

The Holley kit is internally regulated. I'm not a fan of internally regulated systems because if they fail you can't really mess with them so I'm a big fan of using an external regulator and the 2JZ Merc I'm building has an external regulator, the EcoBoost delorean has an external regulator and In my opinion, if you are installing a sniper, you should also install an external regulator because then you know exactly what pressure is going to that unit now because I'm trying to prepare for a road trip. I'm just using the internal regulator that Holley came with, let's see what else, um, Holley comes with a coolant temperature sensor set for 3 8 npt, now the older classic. the cars are going to use a half inch MPT so I had to buy an adapter to get the Buick to go from a half inch to 3 8 it's no big deal and that's just because I wanted to use a plug in the head you know you can just drill a hole in the thermostat housing, which they tell you not to do.

There could be a lot of other places you could put that sensor, but I wanted to use an existing socket on the head, um, and then other than that, it comes with all the cable you need. but whenever I build an EFI car I prefer clean power from the battery, so instead of providing a 12 volt signal from the car, I turned on relays and fuses and powered the relays directly from the battery and use the 12 volt signal from the car. to activate the relay and that's a good idea for any EFI car you want the cleanest power possible as close to the battery as possible and that will eliminate a lot of problems so I did everything I connected everything I'm trying to see.

What else did I have to get so that the original Buick nailhead air filter wouldn't fit in the hollow unit because the way Holly has fuel fittings that come out of the top so you have to buy one Hollow flip base to use a standard 14 inch air filter and I went ahead and bought a Summit Racing 14 inch air filter and just used a filter that is a k n unit and a top hat and those are pretty much the only other things I had to buy. they were Holley so Jen we're talking about a sniper at the time I recorded this video and set up this unit, in the previous videos I say there was only one sniper, it was a sniper.

I'll come back to that later, but there are many known issues with the sniper. Most guys use a plastic rod for the air filter. You have to use MSD superconducting wires or just a very good, well insulated RFI style spark plug wire, so I had to buy those. there's a lot of stuff like that Good grounds, the wiring has to be clean, good solid connection, solder connections that you don't want to use Quick connectors, all that kind of stuff, so that's pretty much all the extra stuff that I had to buy. I would. Let's say the sniper itself was like 1500 bucks, the spark plug wires were like 150, the summit air filter was like 50.

Just weird, late stuff. I probably spent 300 on extra stuff to get the summit to work on this car and that's going to apply to everyone, you won't get everything you need in the box for your particular application but it's a pretty complete kit, most of the parts tough ones are there, some guys might get lucky and everything they need is there or You can get away with using the stuff you have in the shop. This is a huge car so I had to buy a few extra things, but anyway this brings me to a point that I think is not well represented in the YouTube videos out there.

I think a lot of the YouTube channels are sponsored by Holly. Definitely not, they make it seem like you launched in one day and everything is fine, that's not the case, I had about three days and a lot of That was, I had to order a few things. I started working on things here and there. You know other systems, but it will actually take you a weekend to install. Basic weekend mechanic, whatever. So I installed everything and went to turn it on. and the first time I tried to fire I didn't get any fuel pump activation and I thought it was something I did so I checked the pump wiring it was fine.

I didn't understand why it wasn't working. and what I realized is that Holley won't send the signal to the pump until you've programmed the assistant, so if you just plug the power in and try it, you know you're expecting to hear the pump turn on, it won't. Come on first you have to run the setup wizard on Holley as soon as I did the key turned it back on and it immediately turned on the pump so if you're out there don't freak out when the pump doesn't work. Don't turn it on at first, just program The Wizard and it will work after that.

I did the hyperspark ignition, so I phased it. The dealer did everything according to the instructions. That's super easy and that hyper spark is great. Put your number one. Cylinder to top dead center Aim the rotor at that cylinder, put the little plastic cap on at that stage, the distributor is done and if you buy the Hyper Spark and the Holley stuff all together, everything is pretty much Plug and Play, there are like four or five cables. uh you have to plug it in and all the harness wires that you weren't using depend on and that's something I recommend to anyone doing EFI, any extra wires that aren't in use, think of it as a radio antenna. one more antenna to pick up radio interference or Emi that kind of thing, so you want to eliminate the cables that you are not using because if you have a bunch of coiled cables thatthey can cause disturbances in the computer and that's what any EFI is, so anyway, after everything was done, I put the key in it, turned it over and it literally took like a second to turn it over and it went off and it went off, It worked great for about 20 minutes.

She was walking around the car as if singing its praises. About how amazing this unit was, I turned it off a couple of times and turned it back on because you know you have to replicate it. I don't believe anything until I played it and the throttle response was incredible. I went there and grabbed the throttle bodies. It was about twice as fast as the original ignition and carburetor. The engine sounded happier. Know. I turned on the ignition. I locked the ignition timing at whatever it was 12 degrees or 15 degrees. I turned on the timing light like the hyper spark element worked great so like I said initially I was super excited okay and then I turned off the car, I went back around and started looking, but just made sure it didn't leak any fuel.

I put the security things in place. I backed up, I was under the hood playing with some stuff and I felt something hit my face and I realized it was fuel. I could smell the fuel and looked at the front throttles as if the primaries where the primaries would be on a car were just overflowing. with fuel and I didn't see it in the video that you guys saw earlier, but I mean, it was overflowing with fuel to the point where I thought it was going to burn down my shop, I mean, the whole top of the engine was soaked. on gasoline, so I turned it off immediately, filled my crankcase with gasoline.

I mean, my respirator started overflowing with oil. There was a huge puddle under the car. I was afraid I had ruined the engine. I was very angry, you can imagine, so I did it. I don't know, maybe I thought maybe the TPS was reading high or something crazy that made the computer think the thing was wide open, so I checked the handheld and it was showing three percent or less than three percent, which which was fine and it was Not stuck, so I said, let me upload this and see if it happens again. Sure enough, I turned it up and could slowly see the front floating bowls starting to fill, fill, fill when I turned it off and that's what you see. in the video above it's actually draining into the crankcase uh in the end I was able to get my phone out to record it because I had the GoPro for you guys.

I didn't take out my phone because I was playing music, so I got really angry. I posted a few things on the forums like, has anyone experienced this? I went through all my setup stuff, blah blah blah, and some guys contacted me and said, "Hey, there's a ton of those." units that were factory defective with a layer of dust like they had spray and a layer of dust on them, especially the black units. I had people come up to me and tell me that the laptops there is a bad batch that doesn't work. Come to me and say, "Hey, it's very common for fuel injectors to become disconnected during shipping and people asked me, Hi, was your fuel system new?

Is it possible that you blew sand into the injectors?" I don't know what you're doing, you didn't install it right, you're an idiot. I've never had a problem with mine. I've installed 50 million of these and never had a problem. It's a great story. uh one when I buy something for fifteen hundred dollars and people tell me I need to take it apart to check that the injectors are plugged in correctly it needs to be checked before it is shipped to me and it should work right away two of those guys that think my fuel system was bad, fuel tank was cleaned, whole system was new, flushed and filtered, nothing came out of my fuel system into that Holley, then I found out there are some guys that say they already know.

Holidays have sand and things like that when they ship and you have to clean them before you refuel them. It's ridiculous for the amount of money they cost. I shouldn't have to do that, um, and for all those people. Who thinks I don't know what I'm doing? I have built EFI systems from scratch. I have executed Mega squirt. I have run separate ECUs. I have run factory ecu. I execute ecu in tow. I have exchanged 2jzs LS. engines EcoBoost engines I've changed all kinds of things I've built all kinds of things I know what I'm doing when it comes to EFI I wouldn't call myself a tuner but I'm also pretty decent at getting a car up to a point where it's ready to go going to a dyno, so you know, for those of you who think it has to be my fault.

Well, believe it, that's great. I'm just trying to share my real experience because I don't believe. There are many unedited and unsponsored videos on YouTube that show real experiences. I also contacted Holly's tech support. I reviewed the entire diagnosis with them. I answered all of their questions and they immediately agreed with me that this was a defective unit. from the box because I'm talking about normally when the injectors fail and they have things inside them. They do not spray efficiently or do not spray at all. They don't stay fully open, but Holly had no problems anyway. telling me the unit was defective and the tech support guy I spoke to told me to just go ahead and follow our return process.

She gave me the phone number and website and if you go to Holly's website it clearly breaks down the return. process, that brings me to the next part of the story, those of you who are wondering what customer service is like now, I will tell you that if you wait on the phone long enough to get technical support, the guys at Holly are great guys , but customer service for returns not so much, first of all, when you call customer service for returns, you are not talking to someone from Holly. I imagine they are hiring a company to handle returns that has nothing to do with Holly, they just pay a company to do it and I know this because let me break it down the first time.

I tried to return the product. I called the phone number. I was on hold for 25 minutes. Finally a lady called me and I had to explain to her. situation and she said well do you have the part number you want to replace? And I told him: listen. I don't want to replace the entire kit. I just want to replace the throttle body. I don't want my money back. I just want to change the throttle body, I put a new one in the car and she said well sir I need a part number and I said well the only part number I have is the one I ordered and she said well , I do not understand that. the part number would be for the throttle body so I'll have to pass it on to another guy.

I believe she tried to send me to tech support to get the throttle body number and after being on hold for 20-25 minutes, a total of over 40 minutes. She was at work. She couldn't sit in front of the phone anymore. I hung up so the next day I tried email because I also have an email system so I sent an email and explained everything. thing and I actually attached the email to my purchase order so it had all the part numbers that were shown when I bought the unit, all that stuff and I shipped it. I immediately received a response saying that due to the overwhelming seven to ten business day returns, don't send duplicate emails, you'll sell the process, all that crap.

I think my entire email process was about 10 days, the first time I got a response was about, I want to say five days later, um, never mind. I'm not trying to throw a stone, but they basically said what are you trying to return, although I had already explained that to them in the email I sent them, so whoever sent me this email didn't read anything, so I sent everything. again and they said what is the part number so again they don't understand systems they don't understand parts whatever company handles returns they want a part number so I finally went to Holly's website .

I went to the single if you're I just bought the sniper without the master kit and gave them that number and then didn't hear anything for a few days. So I responded after about 10 days and said, "Hey, I'll get help with the return process." fed, I'm furious, like this is a lot of money I spent and imagine if I had a deadline I met, I blew it. If you guys don't respond or help me, I'll tell everyone on my YouTube. channeling my friends about this whole scenario, whatever it is, so I finally get a response and it's like we review your case and we would have to get the whole kit back.

I said okay, so you want me to completely uninstall the entire system on this car for a bad throttle body, they said yesterday, that's the way it has to be. I said okay, so I went through the whole process. I put the car on the lift. I had to remove all the fuel lines, all the fittings, all the junk to ship it back. them and I told them sure I will, they will send me a return label because on their site it says we will provide the return label once the kits are received or whatever once the products are received.

Holly will inspect it and confirm it is defective if it is found to be effective. They will refund your money or replace it so they said ok and then they didn't send me a return label. Three more days go by and I think I finally say, hey, I'm fine. this, I'm still waiting for the return label, nothing, a couple more days go by, hey, I'm still waiting for the return label, so now we're like we're over two weeks in, so I finally think to hell with this , I'm calling the phone number again I call this girl on the phone and it's like a whole.

I have to start from scratch. Explains everything. She was quite rude. She acted like she was my fault. She didn't understand what she was talking about. Have you ever gone to an auto parts store and tried to ask a parts technician for a part who clearly had no idea what the part was? That was my general feeling from talking to this person and she was nice but it was frustrating so I finally just told her, I said, look I want my money back, I'm done with this, I'm frustrated and she's like, well Sir, we can refund your money as long as the product is not installed and I said, how am I?

I'm supposed to determine that the product is defective if I don't install it, so she says, "Well, I'll have to talk to my supervisor because I got a little mad and was on hold for about 20 minutes and she comes back." and her supervisor, she's fine, my supervisor said we're going to refund the money, but you have to send the whole child. I told her okay, so she sent me the label at the time I was on the phone with her. I checked my email. and then she sent me an RMA number. They must have the RMA number to return the product.

And then what I also thought was a little strange was that they said it takes up to six weeks to get the money back, which is absolutely ridiculous and then on top of that, they said that when you return this unit to us you have to call us and notify us that the unit has been shipped and confirm the shipping number before they initiate the return, which I understand is fine, but I don't do it. I don't understand it because as a business owner, when you put those things in when they send you pre-printed labels and you put them in the system, it's automatic, so why do I have to call you and tell you?

All of that was trying to get the car ready for a weekend away with my wife, so the easiest thing at the time was that two weeks before it became obvious that I wasn't going to get a new Holly anytime soon and I didn't. I don't know how long it was going to take, hey, let's get back to the carburetor. It literally had everything new. Had a rebuilt carburetor on the shelf, a Carter AFB. I had distributor stuff, wires, plugs, I bought it all, so basically in half a day with my neighbor Dennis, we rebuilt this thing at the factory, rebuilt the distributor, you know, points, all that stuff, put a new carburetor on it, put it on We put in a mechanical fuel pump and by the way, if you're putting a Holley sniper on a classic muscle car, don't do it.

Don't forget you're going to need an off board mechanical fuel pump block which is something else I had to buy anyway, it was like four to six hours of work and we cranked this up and if you want to check out my YouTube channel , there's a In short, that speaks to why I went back to the carburetor and that's the exact moment I turned this on and it's running great again, so I think I'm going to go back to the original reason I converted this to fuel injection. It was to make it easier for my wife to try.

My wife has had a mini carve for I don't know seven eight years. I don't even like that she knows how to drive a carburetor and when you start looking at the simplicity of the system. like there are a limited number of things that can go wrong with the car and the ignition system. I mean, I have spare points in the glove compartment. I have spare fuel pumps in the trunk.I have all the basic things that could fail. I was already in the car, so I started to question myself. This thing is as original as a 64.

Why did I convert to fuel injection? I feel guilty about it, so I'm like it's on a carburetor. Damn, it works great. I have no reason to go. Back to Holly, so for all of you, like, oh, I quit sniping and went back to Old School Technology. Listen. I love carbs and I love fuel injection. In fact, most of the cars I've built do pay attention to me. The channels are modern injection engines, retro rods. My wife likes the originals, she likes the classics, that's what she has, so after all I think the sniper is a bad product.

No, I think the bad thing is that the customer service could be better. The technical support is excellent, but yes. You have a unit return, it's a pain and I think here are some of the problems I have with it. I ordered this thing. I went through all this and three weeks after I ordered it, they also released a sniper, so you would think that when they ordered it, they would have said, hey, we're launching a new unit soon, you might want to wait, that didn't happen and you know Holly you know all the existing RFI problems and all the other crap because Holly also has a better ECU, it has RFI protection, they got rid of the rubber return line, they recommend an external regulator and they sell their own external regulator as an add-on to the kit, like all the things I complain about with this. installation, they solved it with the second installation and that Holley Sniper has been out for I don't know how many 10 or 15 years so they obviously knew about all the problems so that's frustrating but right?

I think it's a bad unit no , I think quality control, you know, for example, three guys in my family installed snipers in the same month, all three of us had different problems and you know, it's funny, after sharing my story with people, I started getting messages . Hey, mine did the same thing. I traded it in for a new unit and it worked great so I think quality control is the issue and Holly is a huge company and they are probably selling millions of these units so I get it. I'm not even upset about it, they're going to give me my money back.

It's been frustrating getting to that point, but I'm going to get my money back, so I'm not against sniping, but I'm definitely not going to sniper this um, I think going through the whole process, I just like this card. car, my wife likes the car, however this 84 Camaro here is a perfect candidate for a sniper and I think the money I get from this. uh, I'm going to go ahead and order a sniper to put that Camaro in there too. It needs a new engine so I think I'll get a 350 short block. Take all the good speed parts out of the one already there and I'll put in a sniper, try it again and then if I have bad luck with that unit then I'll end up with the snipers, but all the hate, you know, people like the excuse that I'm going to make the car easier for them. my wife is not entirely true, you could teach your wife how to drive a carburetor, you could teach her how to put out a fire in a carburetor, if it happens you can teach her how to heat the thing up when it starts.

Carbs are easy and if you have problems with a carburetor and don't want to rebuild it, just buy a new one. The AFV Carter I rebuilt and bolted on didn't do anything to it, it started up. You buy an Edelbrock 650 out of a box or a Holley 650 they work, I mean carbs have been around for so long they have them dialed in, just bolt on a new carburetor it will solve 90 of your problems so anyway I hope that throws something up of light on why he abandoned the sniper and again, this is the deal whenever something is built for everything and it's universal, it won't be good at anything, it will be good at all things, so remember that the idea that an EFI screwed is literally going to be screwed, don't mess with it and it's going to work and it's not going to be true and that's coming from a guy who's already done it.

I put an EcoBoost and a DeLorean and I put a 2JZ and a Mercedes. I put an LS. and a '70 Chevy, I could go on and on, there's no such thing as fuel injection that you just bolt on and go, they all need to be tuned, they all need adjustments, uh, you know, factory fuel injected cars are millions of dollars invested in just the fuel system and ECUs, they have huge teams of engineers who do nothing more than that, so really the fact that Holly can launch a product in any type like I could implement it is a pretty impressive feat, but Don't expect all these great things.

Big money YouTube channels that make it look like you're going to screw this thing up and your car will be the best thing since sliced ​​bread isn't true. Also, these Hollies come with this little screen and it makes it easy to program, but remember you can download the Holly tuning software and use your laptop to connect it and that has a lot more settings and a lot more features and I'll end with this if You're a guy who shot a sniper. and you like it, it's working great. I don't care if you're a guy who uses a Dyno carb with an EFI carb.

The time is worth it. Every time I take a car to a Dyno it runs better. vehicle a faster vehicle by putting bigger numbers find a Dyno you trust find a tuner you trust if you like your carburetor put it on a dyno if you like your EFI put it on a Dyno I mean, the first time I took a car to a Dyno was my 70 Chevy with a carburetor and I think I caught 50 wheels on the dyno like Street tuning, there is dyno tuning, a good combination of both makes a good car anyway, hope you enjoyed it, I know It was a lot of talking, but I think it will answer a lot of questions for you guys who are on the fence about a sniper.

I think they'll be happy either way, they'll just realize there are a lot of guys who have had problems. Coming out of the box like me doesn't mean you should give up I'm not going to quit I'm going to try again I'm going to go sniper too this old girl is going to stay in a car so thanks for tuning in see you next time with the steel garage .