Sniper EFI Timing Issues

Been having a hell of a time getting my car to run after swapping in a Holley Hyperspark distributor and enabling timing control in the ECU. If I put the motor on TDC and then phase the distributor with the clear plastic cap it puts the rotor past #1. Timing is way over advanced. Can't turn the distributor back because it eventually bumps into the head . Even if it didn't hit the head this negates using the clear cap.

Motor was running fine with verified timing before on an MSD Pro Billet. Reason I decided to replace the MSD is to get advance at cruise.

What the hell am I doing wrong?

EDIT: Using an MSD 6AL ignition box with this setup and not the Holley, if that matters...

If the only problem is hitting the head.

Rotate the distributor away from the head 22.5 degress. That is 1 tower over. Then move the wires back over 1 position.

Probably wouldn't hurt to verify the oil pump drive is properly indexed.

I moved the wires over one plug on the cap and have enough adjustment to keep it running, but I can't sync the computer to the balancer so that both show the same timing. A light shows the idle being 15 degrees and the handheld shows -8. Been through the directions a couple of times now. Disabled 'Idle Spark Control' to turn off it self adjusting the timing and worked from there....no dice...on hold with Holley right now.

Would the distributor drive gear clocking even matter if I've gotten to this point? I don't think it was a problem before with the MSD Pro Billet since it was tall enough to clear the head and had enough adjustment.

I've got the timing lining up now. I should never have went down the rabbit hole of moving the distributor around. You can do that digitally by altering the reference angle on the handheld.

• Lock distributor in place per directions using the clear molded cap
• Start engine
• Use a feature called static timing and set to 15 degrees
• Hit balancer with a light, came back 49 degrees
• Take the difference, 32 degrees and add it to the initial value of the reference angle of 57.5 for a total of 89.5
• check timing at cruise RPM on the balancer against what the handheld says

I had already set my timing numbers on the handheld of 24 initial, 34 WOT, 42 cruise. Once I brought the RPM up the handheld read 42 and so did the balancer.

The installation instructions stop abruptly at step four assuming its all kosher without telling you what to do in the event those initial numbers don't line up. Wasted so much time today...

It runs now, but the ignition still seems choppy with a light miss. Something else to chase down....

Just took it out. There is a noticeable chop to the ignition now. I could hear it spark knocking when I put my foot into it too. Taking three degrees out and putting it down to 39 degrees didn't alleviate it much.

I'm just about ready to toss the Pro Billet back in the car.

No experience with that system, but a couple q’s.......

What does the ecu use to reference “cruise” and “WOT”?

Can you watch the timing live on the hand held?

As I recall, your motor has a pretty short cam....... what’s the CR, and have you ever done a compression test?

“The way I’d want it to work is.......”
The “cruise” timing would only be for the times when the rpm was up a bit, and the manifold vacuum was quite high.
As soon as you started pushing on the throttle, timing should automatically start regarding........so that at anything less than say 6-8” vacuum you’re back to the WOT setting.
That 6-8” is just off the top of my head...... and that would be something that needed to be experimented with.
Basically, you’re trying to mimic a properly functioning vacuum advance.

Did you make sure to turn off the static timing (15 degrees advance) mode before the drive?

Looking at the spark map it seems to use reading from the MAP sensor to make that determination.

Motor has a 230@.050" roller cam in it with a 10.5:1 static compression. I took a compression reading on #1 a while back just for the hell of it and it came back at 190 PSI. I was just screwing around and that was only #1 with all the other plugs in and the engine cold.

Never had any spark knock issues with the old setup set at 24 degrees initial with 34 total all in.

I'll attach a screenshot of the spark map that was auto generated by the ECU ---- sorry it's so hard to read, the forum keeps resizing it and knocking the quality down.

Yeah, it disables that setting as soon as you leave the screen. I did all my test runs on the sensor monitor screen.

Whoa, that timing table is not what you want at all. Looks like zero timing at idle then it jumps to 39 degrees for cruise? You do not want to run the engine with that timing table.

For an engine like yours I'd think you would want to start with a typical curve of 18 at idle, 34 at WOT and maybe 40 at cruise. You fill in those areas and then smooth out between the three areas so the timing changes gradually.

I don't think you should change the reference angle either. That is bad ju ju to mess with the reference angle. The way I set those things up is to put the engine at 35 degrees BTDC. Install the distributor with the rotor pointed at #1. Adjust the oil pump shaft as necessary to allow the rotor to point directly at the #1 tower. Install the cap, double check plug wire order and then fire up the engine. Once the engine is running you enable static timing on the handheld. Set it to something like 25 degrees and then double check with the timing light. If the damper doesn't read 25 degrees then you rotate the distributor a small amount to get it to line up. You should not have to rotate if more than a few degrees if you had the rotor pointed at #1 when the crank was 35 BTDC.

The reference angle should be what Holley wants it. You don't change that.

After looking at that table I realized the entire area that is supposed to have the idle timing map was all zeros. Even though the idle timing at the top explicitly says 24 degrees and was set on the handheld. I've got no idea why it didn't fill out the table properly, but I went ahead and altered the values by hand.

Idle: 22
WOT: 32
Cruise: 36

Uploaded the new map and took it for a quick ride. The idle is great and the ignition smoothed out through the range. Spark knock is gone now when I put my foot into it.

Getting this thing setup certainly wasn't easy....

Any recommendations on timing tweaks?

Attached is the new map.

I put a Sniper on my 440 this winter. I'm using the stock Mopar distributor that I locked out and disconnected the vacuum to trigger the ecu. I had a couple of guys tell me that it would be difficult to make it work. I have it working very well after chasing down some emi issues. Your image of your spark table is what the software generates and it isn't very drivable. Go the Holley support forums and check out the Sniper forum. They have a couple of threads about creating a good spark table. Essentially, they copy a table from a different version of software and paste it into the Sniper software. I did that and modified it to mimic what the mechanical and vacuum advance curve I was running before. If you graph what you have, you will see sharp changes at the edges of the three areas. What I have now has a smooth curve in the transitions.

I notice you said you have wot maxed out at 34*. I'm running 38* wot and cruise will go as high as 49* and I haven't had any detonation issues, but I'm running about 9.6 to 1 cr.

randavis

You need to smooth out the timing table. The engine is not going to like those abrupt steps in the timing. The engine will shudder back and forth across those big steps. You can either manually smooth the table or just hit the smooth button a few times.

Are you programming with the handheld? If so you have to really watch the inputs. The handheld has a difficult time with finger commands and sometimes the input doesn't get taken. Use the stylus rather than your finger and you might have better results. Just be super careful when programming with the handheld because you can end up with really weird results due to miscommunication. You should probably buy the cable and hook up with a laptop if you're going to really tune a Sniper.

The other way to tune with a laptop is to just pop the SD card out of the handheld and put it into your desktop computer. Then you can edit the tune file with your desktop computer. Once you have it edited how you want you pop the SD carb back into the handheld and upload the new tune to your Sniper.

Yeah, I fully understand the 'thar-be-dragons' warning regarding the reference angle. I didn't know what its function was until I chatted with Holley support and they had me alter it a couple times. I'm hesitant to pull it all apart again since everything seems to be correctly dialed in now. Eventually I will though and make it proper.

I was doing most of the configuration from the handheld before. The stylus that comes with it does a decent job, but it's still all over the place.

Here is what the smoothed out map looks like. Haven't uploaded it yet to the car, maybe if I can get time tonight. If all goes well I just need to figure what this motor wants for all in timing.

Thanks!

Your low RPM map looks kind of backwards. You have 32* of timing at 100 KPA (WOT) off idle, but 22* at idle. Either you want less than 32* at 100 KPA, or your engine wants more than 32* at idle, or something in between.

The numbers should get lower as you go from 0 KPA up to 100 KPA.

I would start the advance curve at 1250, or even 1000 if you idle lower than 1000.

I think you need to smooth that curve out more. I'm not sure how well you can smooth things with the handheld but with the laptop you can select an area with the mouse and then smooth it out. I wouldn't run a curve like that in an engine since the timing is jumping 3 degrees in 50 rpm. I think that would be hard on the engine to have the timing jump around like that although the load is light in that area so it might not matter too much.

This image might clear things up a bit what certain areas in a timing table roughly relate to as to engine operation...

And also:

I really appreciate all the input here guys. Finally got some time and tossed a better map together based off of the feedback I've gotten here. Haven't driven yet.

It is a lot smoother but those top rows should be around 34 degrees for a big block with aluminum heads. The engine is going to be up there in the top rows at WOT. Where the engine is at WOT depends on your barometric pressure so you need to think about that but you also need to think about what happens if you drive the car somewhere else. For example, we were on the dyno today with a BB Mopar using EFI and at WOT the engine was right at 100 kpa. Barometric pressure was 102 kpa outside but inside the throttle body it was 100 kpa. So 2 kpa of pressure drop across the throttle body. On your table the timing would've been very retarded at 100 kpa. You would be giving up a ton of power with that tune.

That's what we did on my sons. He takes the chip card out of the hand held and puts it in the lab top. Then we smooth out the timing curve. Course we have worked with it some to get it where we like it but that's the cool thing about it is that once you start learning how much you can do with that setup you will find you can do a lot to make it run great. My sons 400 in his Dart is running real good but he is always trimming a bit here or there to see if the car likes it better and fine tuning it to work great. Good luck with yours , Ron

Eventually I'll get this right.

Taking this for a ride right now.