[ponchjoe]

Originally Posted by JLMounce

Research is kind of pointless on these things. Whether it's the Sniper, the FiTech, or any of the derivatives of these two systems, you'll likely hear the same thing. Pile of junk, poor service etc.

The tech service from the Holley umbrella brands is woefully inadequate. It's staffed by people that do nothing but read from a knowledge base. The service you tend to get from FiTech seems to be better, with the caveat of actually being able to get on the phone with them.

I have a very early run 300001 FiTech GoStreet 4. In terms of the units go, it represents the worst software development, the worst and slowest ECU, the worst firmware and the worst wiring harness. And yet, the thing won't die. The only issues I've had with my FiTech in 8 years of operations is that the main harness connector burned up due to being undersized for the amp load. I spent $40.00 on a nice weatherpack connector, and spent an hour repinning the harness. No issues sense. With the second iteration of the systems, the replaced the connector and upsized the fuel pump wiring to combat that issue as well as updating the firmware which is much faster, interpolates better and handles timing control better.

I recently flashed my original 195t firmware to the 198i firmware found on the second generation FiTech units and there's a noticeable difference in driveability with timing control.

The most recent iterations now have a further improved harness protected by relays. Most people that have success with any of these units (EFI in general) have everything triggered from separate channel relays. I myself use and MSD 4 channel solid state relay. The new units handle this for you in one kit. The firmware has also been updated, but I don't know much about it. I would assume it's once again faster and probably provides some other benefits.

Of all the units on the market today, they are all going to work for what you want. None of them are immune to possible issues; they are a mass produced part after all. That said, 90% of issues people report on are caused by poor installation, or a car that is in no condition to put electronically sensitive equipment on.

Key to success for these things include no skimping on the fuel system as the top priority. Stay away from the auxiliary fuel reservoir stuff. Buy a new EFI ready tank and put an OEM grade fuel pump in the tank. Make sure the wiring on the car is in good order and that it is grounded well. If you have any vacuum or exhaust leaks, fix them. If the car has a propensity to overheat with a carb, it'll probably be worse once you put an EFI system on it. Fix that as well.

Then make sure you don't half-ass the install. The oxygen sensor should be as close to the head as possible while seeing the most amount of cylinders it can. This is typically in a header collector or just past the manifold outlet if you run manifolds and down-pipes. There should be no exhaust leaks up-stream, or within 18" downstream of the oxygen sensor.

Finally, none of these systems are truly "self learning." They don't know what your engine wants or needs, they can only learn to do what you tell it. If you tell it to do something the engine does like, it'll produce poor results. So you do have to have at least a basic understanding of how to tune your engine in a traditional fashion. Realize that some amount of user defined tuning will always be needed. Most often this relates to off-idle transients in most of these systems. Sometimes you may need to work on fuel cut controls as well.

If you keep those things in mind and set yourself up for success, you'll have success, regardless of which system you purchase.

Yea Jason I get it, only the bad gets out there on anything. I appreciate the insight