Which to buy Holley sniper or stealth

[russelljones48]

OK, so here goes. I am now on my 4th Holley EFI system: 2 Snipers and 2 HP/EFI units. In short here's my advice from my lessons learned:
1.) Find a good tuner before investing. You may not need her/him but make sure they are experienced with your application ex: street, strip, boosted, nitrous etc. I went through 3 or 4 fairly reputable tuners before finally finding someone who was both familiar with my problems and my application. I have a fairly wild 383 SBC with unknown build/cam specs...
2.) With difficult or complex problems, don't count on Holley support. At worst it was like calling a help desk in Bangladesh, at best they were pleasant and reasonably competent but didn't solve my problem.. remember I'm on my 4th unit...
3.) Get help with your order and BOM - I ended up with an unterminated harness for the 1st HP/EFI unit (3rd overall). It sounded like what I needed until I discovered that it has an 80+ wire harness that's unlabeled and has about 20 "duplicates"... I didn't discover this until I'd unpinned the connectors so I could put the ECU under my dash to avoid FRI/EFI...
4.) If you have a well done car with new wiring and a stock or mild build this might be for you.. as a DYI project. I'm a fairly experienced amatuer mechanic and builder with some really good local assistance available. If I were to do this over again it would be to replace/rebuild my old school carb and ignition. Don't get me wrong, I love the car now - I can walk out and start it up easily, it's very drivable, but 3+ years of problems, failed ECU's and poor suppport may not have been worth it.

 

[Zclassic]

I can't comment for myself on the Sniper unit cause I don't own one.....but my buddy who I work with and sell parts to on his client's projects has installed probably a dozen or more of these units on cars and trucks. Most have been mild mannered moderate lift V8's and one 6 cylinder. At least 4 have had ECU failures. He is a wiring guru and trust his judgement and expertise. I know his work with LS swaps using aftermarket wiring harnesses so it's not like he does not know what he's doing. Add to the fact Holley has an issue with sending replacements in a timely manner because of procurement issues they say. One 57 Chevy waited months for it's replacement ECU but they have honored the warranty in each case. He keeps wanting to install on one of my cars but have yet to get a warm fuzzy feeling I won't be stranded somewhere. On the Power Tour last year I witnessed a sniper unit hanging from the firewall of a Camaro with a carb in it's place. That is certainly not the time for a failure of any part.

 

[AEGIS43]

OK, so here goes. I am now on my 4th Holley EFI system: 2 Snipers and 2 HP/EFI units. In short here's my advice from my lessons learned:
1.) Find a good tuner before investing. You may not need her/him but make sure they are experienced with your application ex: street, strip, boosted, nitrous etc. I went through 3 or 4 fairly reputable tuners before finally finding someone who was both familiar with my problems and my application. I have a fairly wild 383 SBC with unknown build/cam specs...
2.) With difficult or complex problems, don't count on Holley support. At worst it was like calling a help desk in Bangladesh, at best they were pleasant and reasonably competent but didn't solve my problem.. remember I'm on my 4th unit...
3.) Get help with your order and BOM - I ended up with an unterminated harness for the 1st HP/EFI unit (3rd overall). It sounded like what I needed until I discovered that it has an 80+ wire harness that's unlabeled and has about 20 "duplicates"... I didn't discover this until I'd unpinned the connectors so I could put the ECU under my dash to avoid FRI/EFI...
4.) If you have a well done car with new wiring and a stock or mild build this might be for you.. as a DYI project. I'm a fairly experienced amatuer mechanic and builder with some really good local assistance available. If I were to do this over again it would be to replace/rebuild my old school carb and ignition. Don't get me wrong, I love the car now - I can walk out and start it up easily, it's very drivable, but 3+ years of problems, failed ECU's and poor suppport may not have been worth it.

Just want to share my appreciation for such a fair and honest assessment of a really important topic. Thank you Russell. For the rest of us, these are wise words indeed.

 

[G72Zed]

If I were to do this over again it would be to replace/rebuild my old school carb and ignition. Don't get me wrong, I love the car now - I can walk out and start it up easily, it's very drivable, but 3+ years of problems, failed ECU's and poor suppport may not have been worth it.

On the Power Tour last year I witnessed a sniper unit hanging from the firewall of a Camaro with a carb in it's place. That is certainly not the time for a failure of any part.

Very interesting posts here. I think if you have a good mild to medium power plant setup, and have a good "EFI" tuner with experience to help or tune, it's very hard to beat a good quality, well setup EFI for the most part......

But..... I will say, I have been busier and busier with "fed up" customers willing/actually tossing the whole EFI setup in the trash and going/gone back to a custom built/tuned carb. Have many that were going to EFI, and changed their mind once everything was added up.....it adds up quickly.

 

[First car]

OK, so here goes. I am now on my 4th Holley EFI system: 2 Snipers and 2 HP/EFI units. In short here's my advice from my lessons learned:
1.) Find a good tuner before investing. You may not need her/him but make sure they are experienced with your application ex: street, strip, boosted, nitrous etc. I went through 3 or 4 fairly reputable tuners before finally finding someone who was both familiar with my problems and my application. I have a fairly wild 383 SBC with unknown build/cam specs...
2.) With difficult or complex problems, don't count on Holley support. At worst it was like calling a help desk in Bangladesh, at best they were pleasant and reasonably competent but didn't solve my problem.. remember I'm on my 4th unit...
3.) Get help with your order and BOM - I ended up with an unterminated harness for the 1st HP/EFI unit (3rd overall). It sounded like what I needed until I discovered that it has an 80+ wire harness that's unlabeled and has about 20 "duplicates"... I didn't discover this until I'd unpinned the connectors so I could put the ECU under my dash to avoid FRI/EFI...
4.) If you have a well done car with new wiring and a stock or mild build this might be for you.. as a DYI project. I'm a fairly experienced amatuer mechanic and builder with some really good local assistance available. If I were to do this over again it would be to replace/rebuild my old school carb and ignition. Don't get me wrong, I love the car now - I can walk out and start it up easily, it's very drivable, but 3+ years of problems, failed ECU's and poor suppport may not have been worth it.

Agree with your observations. I have the Sniper system on my car. I installed the QJet unit along with ignition system and fuel tank. Complete Holley front to rear. Lasted about 7 months before I had crank no start condition. I was under warranty at the time and played the usual games with that. Long and short was I was down from September last year till March of this year. My condition was a crank no start was because of no spark. There was not signal coming from the white wire, hence a unit issue. I did have to go thru the Holley process before they replaced the complete unit. My car is running now and running well. My issue is I have to learn to trust the car again. I never had that issue with my Q Jet. I really like the system but question the quality.

 

[AllGoNoShow]

I know your asking about Holley products, but just for comparison to some of the horror stories above, I installed an Edelbrock Pro Flo 4 on my C10 SBC (the engine was actually removed from my camaro and the short block is going on 25 years old) and it worked flawlessly the first time, right out of the box, and has had essentially zero issues for the last two years. I can adjust timing, targeted fuel ratios, idle speed, all over my phone in seconds. I don't even want to consider how many dozens of hours I had tuning the Holley 650 DP on that engine before I switched to the EFI...and it doesn't compare.

 

[73Z L92]

I haven't used Holley so I cant comment on how it is good or bad. Over on LS1tech.com there is a guy that remote tunes Holley stuff. Has a good rep. He goes by Andrew70?
Again not saying Holley isn't good but I've used stock GM stuff on all my LS swaps. I can get parts as needed almost anywhere. My builds are fairly mild. Headers, small cam and over drive transmissions.

 

[1978 Z/28]

what about fitech. I have hear fitech is more copulated than sniper. Any positive responses about sniper. I want to stick a throttle body efi because of sentimental reasons, I bought my 292/turbo heads from Uncle's chev dealership new in 1979 and a machinist and I port matched my victor JR intake.

 

[Zee]

To the question of the difference between the two units. I have a Stealth 4150 and there are a lot of differences to consider.
1) The Stealth throttle body is essentially the same length as a Holley XP which means it may not fit some of your drop base air cleaners without some "clearancing". If you choose to change your fuel line, you will also need to use an XP dual feed center to center distance.
2) The Stealth does not have a dual drilled flange like the base model. So you are not going to be able to use the Q Jet bolt pattern without an adapter which is a consideration given hood clearance issues with our cars.
3) You CANNOT use the progressive linkage. As the ECM is mounted on the side and Holley chose to use the same wiring harness, instead of the primary then secondary injectors being connected, the left and right sides are connected. So if you set up for the progressive linkage, you are going to end up with the right rear venturi full of fuel. Use the throttle extension instead.
4) All wiring comes out the back. Depending on the engine, this can create 2 problems. The first is the length of the CTS may need to be extended and second, the entire system is well known to be prone to EMI and on an engine with the distributor in the rear you really need to put some thought into wire routing.
5) The Stealth does not have a return line and therefore does not use an internal regulator. Typically most use an external regulator with a return or the C5 LS1 filter/regulator. Both are distinct from a true "returnless" PWM system.

In my opinion, the entire Sniper 1 system is seriously flawed and deceptively marketed. Same deal with FiTech. You really got to look at this as you are installing an engine management system designed to reach a price point that is going to use various sensors (of questionable quality) to control every aspect of your fuel, timing and cooling and have ZERO diagnostic capability. So your half assed 50 year old analog electrical system and leaky headers aren't going to cut it. If you have any mechanical problems that were being masked by a carb, rest assured, fuel injection will find them and cause you more problems until they are fixed. With zero diagnostic capability, many will find this frustrating as their car "ran fine with the carb before". You will need to get your car as close to configured and operating like a new car as possible. The Sniper 2 is said to correct nearly all of the known issues.

I did a ton of rework in advance of my install and am relatively satisfied with it. Tuning is a breeze. Outside of inconsistent voltage from a Autozone ignition switch and an O2 sensor failure, I have had no problems. However, if I were to do it over again and go the Holley route, the Terminator X Stealth represents a significant improvement over either the Sniper1 or Sniper2 for a variety of reasons. https://www.efisystempro.com/terminator/terminator-stealth-4BBl-tbi-systems-550-1001-thru-1016

 

[COPO]

Not for me. I hear too many hoar stories of it not working properly. Youtube has many that end up going back to the ol Carb.