(engines rev) - That looks really good (laughs). - [Matt] So, we're gonna be
runnin' this place more often? - [Davin] I can't think of
anything better to do (laughs). (drawer thuds) (drills whir) - I'm Matt Lewis with
Haggerty Classic Cars - and today, Davin and I are gonna be installing
a Holley EFI system, the terminator system, on his Chevelle. - Yep, I'm making the
break from a carburetor, good old-fashioned, proven
technology we'll say, to a EFI, but I'm excited
about it, it's going to be fun. - To a world that I'm used to. - It's got a lot of wires, man. - It does. - The whole idea here is
Holley came to us and said, "Hey, how would you like to do
an install on a classic car?" And given the fact that my
personal car, a '66 Chevelle, is not bone stock original, so I'm not taking away from
any kind of holy grail, I said, "Sure, why not?
Sounds like a great idea." - We are approaching this somewhat scientifically though, right? Absolutely. We're not
trying to make everything completely subjective. - Right. - So the first test we're gonna do is what we call our "butt dyno" which is good old-fashioned, I have no tools available to me, other than a very safe
location to do this-- - And a tape measure.
- And a tape measure. - That's right. But it is worth noting, while you were on the drag strip-- - Yeah, I'm fully aware
that I'm responsible for anything that would
have happened on the track. - Pretty much any insurance
policy you come across, racing (clicks tongue), no go. You're not covered at all
while you're on the track. (engine revs as car starts) - All right, so my scientific test is-- - Line up and start. - We're gonna leave it in drive, I'm gonna look out here real quick, and all I'm gonna do is line up to the white lines-- - All right, we're on the stripe. - Yep, I am gonna brake torque only enough to bring the rpm up and
then just basically tomp it and what happens, happens. - (energetic rock music)
- (tires squeal) - There we go. - All right. There's the beauty of-- - It made noise. - of an automatic. - [Davin] There's two.
(tires squeal) - Oh! Stickier tires--
- You're hot, you're hotter. - (laughs)
- That's right. (energetic rock music)
(tires squeal) - The other test we're doing, we are already at
Northern Michigan Dragway, so we might as well take
it down the eighth mile and get a couple times in
to see how fast you can go before we install anything. - Yeah, that way we have a real
world data point we'll say, that shows this is the
performance more or less. (engines rev loudly) - Gonna leave it in drive, let
the tranny do the shiftin'. We'll do the same thing as far as launch. We'll work on 2,000. (tires squeal)
(engine revs) (intense energetic rock music) - Yeah. I gotta give
you the full experience. - Great. (engine revs)
(energetic rock music) (tires squeal) - Stall it? - That's why I don't like this carburetor. (intense energetic rock music)
(engine revs) (tires squeal) - The next one will be
true chassis dyno testing. This is the horsepower and
torque numbers that you get to the rear wheels, which
again is a real world test. - Yeah.
- With data though. - And right in our
backyard, we have LoveFab-- - [Davin] Yes.
- who do excellent work with modern cars, but they have a dyno. - [Davin] Yep, and he was tickled to death when I said I was going
from a carburetor to EFI. (engines revving)
(intense rock music) - Not that this is the most
important thing in a classic car but it certainly is a
nice extra, we'll say. - It'll be a testament to what
this system is capable of. - Yeah, which is our fuel mileage test. So, in that, what we're
gonna do is we're gonna top the tank completely off. It has the old school filler neck that you can see the fuel come up into. We'll bring that fuel
right up to the top level, top it off, leave that gas station, make a beautiful route
up the peninsula here, and come back to the same exact
spot and top the fuel off, and we'll know exactly
what we used for fuel, and then we'll do the
same exact comparison with the EFI system. - Do a wine tour while we're up here? - That doesn't sound bad. I could have my wife come and get us when we're done (laughs). - [Matt] She likes driving
the Chevelle, doesn't she? - [Davin] She won't mind. (energetic rock music) - The part that will be subjective is obviously the maintenance
of a carburetor, let's say. - The tunability of the EFI, and of course it's just more convenient. The reliability side of it. - Well, right. You can walk
up to it and fire it up any time of the year. - Right. Without pumping the
gas (claps hands) 14 times. - (laughs) That's right. - I did a little perusing
of the instructions, I know that's kind of like
cheating in man world. - Absolutely. - But at any rate, I did notice that there is no
ridiculously special tools. - No, it's actually a
fairly short tool list. - I mean, I got a small blade screwdriver, I mean heck, this should be easy. - Who doesn't have a
number two Phillips, huh? - Yeah. Now granted, I
have collected a couple-- - Extras. - extra tools here and there that I think might make
things just a pinch easier, but there's certainly no reason you can't do this on your back in your driveway in a safe manner. - I've done plenty of stuff
like this on jack stands. - [Davin] So we have a throttle
body with the fuel injectors and all the sensors. - [Matt] Yeah. - [Davin] Bolt on, bolt
off for the carburetor. An exhaust sensor, O2 sensor to other folks. Fuel pressure regulator for the billet fuel pump with a pre-filter and a post-filter. Fuel pressure sensor and then we have the controller to set up all the programming. - The programmer, and over
on my side of the table, I've got wires, with wires, and wires, and wires. But, not to get too daunting
with this wire thing, they are all very clearly labelled and they come with a
little porty on the end so you don't have to worry about where they go or what they fit into. It's all labeled out for you. And finally, the brains
of it all, the ECM. - Excellent. All right,
so the other item we have is of course plumbing up the fuel line, we got all the fuel fittings. - And, beautiful braided fuel line. - There we go. - Let's get going.
- Let's do it. (energetic rock music) (energetic rock music
intensifies with bass) (whirs over music) - [Davin] Holley EFI ... nothing? (engine revs as car starts) - There you have it. We have a table full of parts and one installed Holley EFI system. - Yes we have. And it fired up within about
the third or fourth try. - Right. Once we figured out there was a little bit of a vacuum issue, it was alarmingly plug-and-play. - In fact, I'm gonna say
the most difficult piece of putting the whole system together is the fact that this car
never had a return fuel line, so had to drop the tank and
weld a bung into the tank for the return line, which I
took to a professional to do, only because I have never
done that in the past so basically put it on him. - And welding around fuel
seems like something that probably should be left to professionals. - At least experienced. - So beyond that, I mean
really the difficult parts were working with braided fuel lines-- - [Davin] Yep. - [Matt] which isn't terribly difficult-- - [Davin] No, no. - [Matt] but it's something
you have to learn. Running some electrical wires, and tidying them up, making them neat. - [Davin] Correct. - [Matt] And then a little bit
with that little controller, figuring out getting through menus and being efficient with that. But, all in all, I was pretty
surprised with how this thing fired up as soon as we got going. The programmer has a
really nice setup wizard. You select your CID, you select your ignition type, the type of cam you have,
and you run with it. - Gives you a nice place to
start, nice calibration point. - It does. And then the
nice thing about these, with all the sensors is it
learns and it figures itself out, starts to smooth out and gets nice. - It does. It's kind of funny how it goes, "I'm searching, I'm
searching, I'm searching, (voice drops) I'm searching,
I'm searching, okay I'm happy." - Yeah. - So from here, we need
to do some more driving for it to self-learn, and then-- - Run it through the
paces, same thing we did before we got the kit. - Yep, off to the dyno,
do our fuel test, and hit the drag strip for hopefully
a little faster times as well. (engine running) (energetic, upbeat rock music) (rock music intensifies)
(engine revs loudly) - The dyno was great. 328 horse to 360, right? - Yes, that's phenomenal. - And 460 foot pounds to just over 500. - Yep, which, I'll guess shame on me, kind of shows that my
carburetor tuning abilities may not be as good as
I'd like to think it is. - Right. - But it was an old carburetor. - Not every car is going to see that kind of increase from this kit. Even Holley says it's not a
performance upgrade necessarily. - The ease of putting the fuel
injection on, starting it up, tuning it in the self
tune mode was phenomenal. And add in that little kicker
with the extra dyno tune to speed that process up,
definitely showed its results. - Absolutely, and that was
fuel economy, we saw that too. - I think that is the
largest shock for me. I fully expected them to be better, but I was thinking maybe
three to four percent, not 20. A little over 11 going
into it, and now over 14. That's tremendous. So now, at the drag strip
we did our butt dyno and running ETs. Butt dyno, pretty
impressive, would you say? - It was impressive last week. - It was impressive last week, yes. But doubling -- - This was super impressive. - more than doubling the
distance, I think was huge. - This is a clear example
of power exceeding grip. - All right, so at two grand. (engine idling over rock music) - All right, there's two grand, and ... (engine revs)
(tires squeal) - (laughs) - I think you did a little
bit more on that one. - It was all rev limiter. (engine revs)
(tires squeal) (intense rock music) - Evidently these radial tires
have a limitation of torque being applied to them. - Right, it's just under 500 (laughs). - Uh, yeah (laughs). Yes, because things were
one-for-one test method and purely different in a big manner. - Yeah, more that twice the strip. - Correct. - 201 feet. - And a little squirmier, I might add. - Well that's just fun.
- Yeah. Okay, so our ET results initially, I was a little disappointed. - Yeah. - Other than maybe the show
put on wouldn't be so bad. - Right, you did smoke the
tires for an entire eighth mile. (engine idles)
(intense energetic rock music) (tires squeal)
(engine revs loudly) - (laughs) - You smoked the tires
the whole eighth mile. - (laughs loudly) - I'd say there's not
enough compound down. That was not a good pass. - Yeah, not exactly what
you're looking for though, in this method of test. - [Matt] Right, right, as
fun as it is ... (laughs) - Yeah so obviously the additional power I needed to back out of that rpm and finally ended up
lowering some tire pressure to get a little more bite. (engines revving)
(tires squeal) (intense energetic rock music) - We still gained three tenths. - We did. While smoking the tires. - (laughs) While smoking the tires, yeah. So little quicker and impressive
looking, I guess we'll say. So overall, easy to install - Easy to install. - Performance improvements
all the way around in our scenario and I think every test will improve on the efficiency and the
capability, reliability. - Yeah, as that system learns,
it's just gonna get better. - I guess maybe enough of
this, and let's go drive. - Yeah we should let the
system learn some more. - Yeah, I think so. - I think that's good. (engines rev)
(tires squeal) (engine idling)
