Slant 6 gets Holley Sniper

[DKMC]

Incidentally, I had always thought the slant 6 was mostly a joke. Then some years back,I got a 1970 Yale forklift with a 170 in it and read up on them with a new appreciation of the reliable design. I've done some maintenance work to the machine, and did replace the propane fuel system components. But I would not be at all happy to have to do an entire rebuild on such an obsolete engine. I'd probably look for a newer model forklift instead. Sinking such money into a gasoline fuel generator seems foolish.

[Henry W]

The slant six is an ok engine. But my opinion is there is no comparison between the Ford 300 six and a slant six. The 300 six is one of the toughest inline six engine's out there. It's been manufactured from 1966 to 1996. They have been used in so many different applications. A very simple and reliable engine.

I just reworked my 1989 F150 300/4.9 inline six and it became a very well mannered daily driver. If driven normally it has achieved 20.3 mpg. The torque the engine produces from idle to over 2500 is quite impressive.

Keeping things simple in this day and time is more important than ever.

[DKMC]

I just recently got a 15k Yale forklift, someone's swapped in a 292 Chevy. I prefer that over the Slant and the Ford 300.

[Henry W]

A 300 Ford and a 292 Chevy are both good engines. But I prefer the 300 Ford due to better parts availability.

Both engines have proven themselves throughout the years to be tough reliable engines.

 

[Tom Reed]

https://youtu.be/xCCXlf6Bad0
Part 2 Test run and load test. Seems to work pretty good.

[Henry W]

Was good watching the video minus the Holley Sniper. The thing ran very smoothly. A carb set up properly would have done a the same thing minus the worries of having the TBI giving out. As most of you know, I'm not a fan of Snipers. What I want is see how the 1100 Sniper setup holds up within time. Give it 5 years or 1000 hours runtime. Which ever comes first.

For an emergency standby generator, I would have carb. Nothing else. There is a good reason why carbs are used on small engine aircraft's. Not including experimental. And some of the experimental guy's are nuts anyways.

Reliability is the key. And the Sniper units have not proven to be reliable. Lots of problems with them. Search the web. LOL I still have one I'm trying to get rid of. They only lasted about 10,000 miles each before they started having problems.

By the way, my 1989 F150 with 4.9/300 six inline is getting mid to high 18's up to low 20's highway (20.3 recorded) with a Holley 390 4 barrel. I got tired of messing with the Holley Sniper 2300 and removed it. The Sniper only averaged 14-15 mpg when it was operating properly. Yea, after 2-1/2 years of messing with the sniper's and trying to keep them operating properly I'm tired of them. Actually I'm sick of them.

Overall, the video showed good information about the electric governor/controller. This part was very interesting.

[DKMC]

One thing really puzzles me. I see a lot of cars today with sooty black exhaust pipes. They obviously run rich. Cars with carbs would have tan or grey exhaust pipes. I thought with EFI and the computer monitoring A/F ratio 'many' times
per second, it would be regulated closely and keep mixture near optimum. Not so? EFI theory sound good anyway. Henry, your fuel mileage numbers would seem to indicate same?

[Henry W]

DKMC, your observations are correct. It's funny that you brought this up. I just walked in looking at the tailpipe on the truck noticing that it's grey. With the sniper it was always black.
Since the The Holley 390 4 barrel was on the truck drives much better in every way. And it has much more power. Been working on Holley's since the early seventies. I understand what needs to be done to make then operate properly. Very few carbs work out of the box.

Two important things to have when tuning a carb. A good wide band AFR meter and vacuum gauge. Without these, it hard to get a carb tuned right.

[Tom Reed]

I think the cats like to run a bit rich to light their fire. I drive an Audi Q5 diesel and the inside of the chrome exhaust tips is clean and shiny enough to eat off of.

Never having used a Holley sniper efi, I have no idea, except from Henry, what to expect. When shut down properly, a carb should give great service. However the parts do dry out and rot over time.

[Henry W]

Carbs are easy to replace parts and overall if needed.

As I mentioned before. The Holley Snipers have to be sent in for repairs. And, it can take over eight weeks to be repaired. And that is if the parts are in stock.

[Henry W]

Here are some posts from the # 1 forum where people go first for help when Sniper Issues come up. It's a well known company that builds fuel systems.

I don't think I have to go any further with this.

If anyone wants the link to check out the facts just send me a PM




07-31-2022, 10:46 AM
In my view, Sniper reliability suffers from three underlying issues.

ECU location – Having the ECU mounted on the throttle body subjects it to extreme heat and vibration. It's true that it's epoxy potted and I'm sure they're using top temperature spec components, but the constant vibration and thermal cycling will tease out any flaw in the build or design.

WBO2 – While this sensor is the key to the Sniper's flexibility, they are by nature, very delicate. Major automotive manufacturers devote thousands of engineering hours to placement, exhaust design, and heating profiles to ensure long life. The Sniper has one heating profile and placement is something that Holley can't control. This comes under, it's better to be lucky than good. I think the WBO2 should be looked at as a tuning aid only with the ultimate goal to achieve a well-tuned Open Loop system.

Chinese Component Sourcing - Don't get me wrong, the Chinese have the capability to out manufacture any country on the planet (take the iPhone or 8K High Definition displays for example), but they don't do it by default. Achieving those results requires a diligent driving force like Apple with tight specifications and a six sigma quality system. Apple has a whole platoon of engineers that live and work at Foxconn and their suppliers to ensure quality. I'm sure Holley has no such thing, so they get the default, which is usually a cheap copy of the original with nothing to control its quality. It'd be worth some additional cost to improve the quality and therefore reliability.
Just my 2 cents worth.


Sniper Long Term Reliability
04-13-2020, 08:53 AM
Hi Guys. I'd like to hear some feedback on anyone who has had a Sniper on there car for a couple years or so and how it's working. The reason I'm asking is we've been installing the Sniper EFI systems for a couple years now and over half of them have come back with a dead ECU, stuck open injector or injector that won't open. We did send out a couple injectors for testing and cleaning, but could not be fixed. We were told there's a internal problem with the dead ones. Just got a '64 Galaxy in. I installed the Sniper May 2018 and it's burning out WBO2 sensors in under a minute (two Bosch sensors), original lasted till last week. I'm going to check the voltage at the WBO2 ECU output to see if there's anything odd, I've heard of the problem before and again ECU fault.

Holley knows about these problems because as soon as I call in and explain the problem, they tell me send it in we'll email the info. They're very good with that. The Snipers ran good on all the cars we installed them on, but we're having trouble with long term reliability. It's costing us money and the worst part is a very upset customers. Your feedback is appreciated. Thanks, Joey.S
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06-20-2022, 06:08 PM
Here is a review I left on Holley.com that has been "awaiting" moderation for a few weeks now.
TL/DR long term reliability not good. After two years with the sniper and a HyperSpark ignition on my truck I have thrown in the towel and gone back to a carb and a dumb distributor. I think these could be a great products but the sniper unit is just too fragile and temperamental to be a viable option for me. The fragility and temperamental nature was made worse by the hit and miss documentation and tech support from Holley. The Holley forums are filled with people experiencing the same issues however they are very sparsely attended by actual Holley employees. If you ask for help on the forums you will generally be told that you have wiring and or EMI interference issues and need to re route all your wiring away from the spark plug wires. Not exactly easy or feasible on a SBC when the distributor sits inches from the unit and the wiring has to get to the firewall somehow. In each case when I had a failure Holley support responded via email after a day or so and after I provided the obligatory EMI/wiring assurances they recommend replacing components. In two years I have had to replace the throttle position sensor, the temperature sensor (required replacement of entire unit), the WBO2 sensor and most recently the idle air control valve. All of these with the exception of the TPS were replaced free of charge by Summit where I bought the unit but this always involved some back and forth with Holley to get it done as the official warranty expired long ago. The last straw was when the unit started very glitching/resetting itself while in operation causing a momentary loss of power, within minutes of starting this glitching I turned it off at a remote location and could not get it to start again. Two hours with a meter checking fuses and power connections later I noticed that the TPS sensor was reading 70% with the throttle closed. I unplugged the TPS and limped it home with the system glitching and backfiring every few seconds and then noticed that the display was displaying NAN values momentarily with it glitching continuously. It was on the limp home that I decided that I no longer had the patience to keep troubleshooting and fixing this unit and would never trust it to not leave me stranded in some remote off road location. I pulled the unit and the HyperSpark ignition system that I installed with it and they are both now living on the shelf in my workshop.


06-22-2022, 10:27 AM
I've had Snipers that worked for years. I've also had some that failed right out of the box. It's a total crap shoot. At this point in time (2022) I'd say that a carburetor is more reliable than a Sniper. I prefer the Sniper since I like to dink around with the datalogger and the digital tuning and stuff like that, but if I had to trust my life to a system I'd use a carburetor rather than aftermarket EFI. I do trust OEM EFI. I have a couple of Toyota vehicles that are 20 years old and they still have the original wideband O2 sensors in them. They run like Swiss watches year after year. Holley doesn't know anything about OEM level reliability.


06-22-2022, 10:14 PM
Yup, installed about a dozen Snipers on customer's rides & one on my rock crawler. Some were great, others not good. Holley needs to get their QC sorted. I understand the desire to do what has to be done to hit a certain price point, but if it comes at the expense of reliability, it's only going to hurt the brand. I have one toy running a Terminator, and the other a Dominator, with absolutely no issues whatsoever. Going forward (just priced a Sniper install today), I definitely pad the estimate to allow for issues, or try to upsell to a Terminator system.

06-22-2022, 11:22 PM
I had a Dominator system in my Pro Street Duster project car. Worked great until I blew the tune away when cycling the ignition switch. That was such a huge design error by the Holley software team that I lost some confidence in their ability to build robust products. You can literally blow the tune away in any HP or Dominator system by cycling the ignition key rapidly.

07-29-2022, 02:59 PM
Hi AndyF. Did Holley say improper installation or wiring not checked when the Sniper burned its ECU straight away? Or did they say it was tested before they sent it out, so it's not a Holley problem?

[DKMC]

I drove VW Diesels for 26 years, over 750K miles. I don't even like spark ignition engines. I have to say GF bought a new 2011 Suzuki grand vitara and it's been flawless. 235k+ at this point. It's never been in the shop for other than brakes and oil changes which I do myself. Orig. exhaust system. The only incident, a battery cell shorted and took out the regulator on the alternator, no fault of the vehicle. But.....there is that black sooty tail pipe.

[DKMC]

Henry,
What about the Holley Terminator X Max Stealth?

https://youtu.be/KRbWVAi7Z-o

[Henry W]

It still works like a sniper. Anything that is heavily dependent on electronics is going to have issues. Parts availability is still a concern. I've learned my lesson. I don't want anything to do with TBI/CFI (central fuel injection), especially after market.

I would like to keep life as simple as possible.

[Henry W]

The only fuel injection that would make any sense is if it's an engine with stock MPFI setup.  Everything from ECU to injectors including the stock manifold and throttle body. Oh, and let's not forget the O2 sensor. The manufacturer already did all the hard work.

If anyone is interested in TBI/CFI (central fuel injection), look into the GM TBI/CFI conversion's that people are doing. It's more expensive, and seems to work and would probably be more reliable. I almost tried this route. A huge advantage is parts availability an ease of servicing. Most parts are available at auto parts stores and the TBI/CFI can be repaired at home or on the roadside with simple tools.
But, it still won't match a MPFI setup.

It's hard to beat a properly matched and tuned carb setup. Another thing that people don't understand is the importance of intake manifold heat. I've seen lots of the heat riser's on manifold's made inoperative or taken off completely. This is a very bad move. Especially with today's gasoline.

With MPFI you don't have to worry about heat too much because the fuel is injected in the separate intake ports near the head. This setup is, and always be more efficient.

LOL, this is why the comment that I found from someone that understands both TBI/CFI (central fuel injection) and MPFI mentions, "Putting on CFI is like putting lipstick on a pig. When all is said and done, you've still got a pig."

Hope this helps,