EFI Anyone?

[Texasdoc]

I tried a Holley Terminator system and it was a colossal failure. I went thru three WBO2 sensors at $120 each over a few months. Ended up needing a complete head rebuild. The whole ordeal is documented on this site. Don't know what the problem was - did the heads cause the holley to fail or did the Holley system cause damage the heads? Which was first, chicken or the egg?

I ripped it all out and went back to carb. YMMV (hopefully).

[fastd]

Originally Posted by Texasdoc

I tried a Holley Terminator system and it was a colossal failure. I went thru three WBO2 sensors at $120 each over a few months. Ended up needing a complete head rebuild. The whole ordeal is documented on this site. Don't know what the problem was - did the heads cause the holley to fail or did the Holley system cause damage the heads? Which was first, chicken or the egg?

I ripped it all out and went back to carb. YMMV (hopefully).

texasdoc,
do you have a single or dual plane intake? i see that the terminator efi doesnt work well with dual plane.

[Texasdoc]

Originally Posted by fastd

texasdoc,
do you have a single or dual plane intake? i see that the terminator efi doesnt work well with dual plane.

I have a dual plane intake (Edelbrock Performer RPM with a 3/4 phenolic, open spacer.

Glad the Sniper is working for you. I seriously tried for over a year to get it to work. I even bought a new laptop with an Ethernet port to edit the fuel and timing tables, air temp tables, AFR table, etc. It just didn't work. Either Holley has improved their setup with the Sniper or my bad heads confused it so much it kept failing.

[RallySnake]

TexasDoc,

I think a key issue is the camshaft and intake. EFI doesn't like much overlap. I choose a COMP Cams Nitrous HP Camshaft 12-415-8 which has a lot of lift but not too much overlap. I ran the Edelbrock Air Gap manifold for a few months on my car and it made my engine very unhappy (except at full throttle). It was a $325 Endurashine model too. I practically gave it away on eBay. My engine likes a heated manifold. I've had probably 7 or 8 different Edelbrock intakes and the standard RPM is the best for all around power and drivability. You can open up the intake gasket and let the exhaust gas heat the underside of the plenum. My engine runs so much better with all the fuel heated and vaporized. However, the RPM and the Air Gap are so tall that my severely lowered air filter still rubs on the underside of the hood. For the Sniper EFI, I found a nice Endurashine EPS manifold at a good price on eBay and that's on my car now. Because the EPS is 1" lower, I can run a 1/2" open spacer on it. The low RPM power is dramatically better! With 500+ ft lbs of torque, I can power out of slow curves in 3rd gear! The Air Gap may be great for high RPM 1/4 miles. But, it sucks around town. A lot of people have gone back to a heated manifold and you probably should too, unless you have a drag race only car.

The test drive with the Sniper progressive linkage went very well with much smoother power delivery from a stop. Power transition to 4 barrels is pretty smooth and strong. I am hoping that the learning mode will make it even better.

However, I am having a problem at idle. The engine's rpm drops quickly about every 3 seconds. Usually the system catches it and revs it back up but sometimes it stalls. It was doing that before the firmware update and the new secondary link install, too. So, I suspect the PCV valve may be causing a periodic vacuum leak. I am going to block it off and see if that helps. Any other ideas?

RS