I have a few questions about Howell EFI.

1- Has anyone used a custom chip from Howell ?

2- Do they stand behind their product?
3- What is their reputation?

4- Is there a another vender that anyone can recommend?


I'm trying to find the right vender to burn a chip without having to send it back 10 times just to get the engine to run. I have done alot of research on this & other forums but I can not find alot of information about their chips. Please help me with this huge delema.

 

I guess I'm the only person in this forum that has heard of Howell EFI.
I think it is a freakin shame that someone can post a bald face lie about a race that he or she ran & that thread will have 5 pages of CRAP. Or someone can post something about a girl problem & that post will live forever. But ask a legitamint question & NO ONE will post a damned thing. If you have a question about burning your own chip then you will have pages & pages of confliting advise. If you ask about a company that will burn it for you then NO ONE will answear you. I'm sorry I don't have the time, patience, or money to buy the equipment & teach myself how to use.
Finished with my rant now. You can have the soapbox.......

 

I would bet most haven't heard of these guys. I sure haven't, and I've been around for a little while. So I think you should calm down a little about this board. This board has some of the best technical content that I've seen for an auto forum.

I would suggest you post on the DIY PROM board, they probably know a lot more about this stuff than the Vendor board. Good luck.

 

Good luck finding anyone that can do that. Without your car on a dyno and being driven around it is REALLY hard to tune a car perfectly. Find someone local and pay, or do it yourself, imho.

 

I have tried to locate a local tuner here & in New Orleans. I even posted a thread here & hey guess what!!!!! NOBODY posted anything except tune it yourself.

 

Unfortunately TPI cars are not popular for tuning, most everyone has moved onto the LS1 OBDII tuning.

There is a reason why everyone says tune it yourself... it's normally the easiest and cheapest way to do it. Just because you aren't getting the answer you want to hear doesn't mean you aren't getting the best advice.

 

I wouldn't mind dropping the vehicle off for a few days so that a tuner can do it properly. I don't have the time to do it myself with everything going on right now. Dad recently in a nursing home & stepmother with a spinal injury. I don't have time for myself or my kids right now.

 

Just so you know there are those that know of Howell and other companies... I have done business with them years ago. They did a speed density chip for me for my old 400 TPI in my old 4x4 Jimmy. Performance was fine from there work. I gave them all of the perameters, they burned and sent the chip in a very timely manner. Never had to go back.

Also, I had also used Ed Wright at Fast Chips years ago for my 383 Superrammed z28. Initially, I had no problems, but later started seeing some knock through a scanner. Based upon timing advance data captures from my scanner, Fast Chips burned a new chip at no additional charge, even though we both agreed the problem might ultimately prove to be cause by other things, which was the case.

In both cases these were done before the DIY Prom boards were really up to speed as they have become.

Finally, for the Edelbrock multipoint EFI on my Burb, they sent the work to Command Performance in Colorado.

Generally, in all cases I've had, the customer service was good, work was supported, and was timely. Each vendor usually has a form to fill out about mods and setup of the drivetrain etc. Several like Howell, FastChips etc have been around so long, they likely have a real good historical base to pull from.

 

I don't have any personal experience with them, but here in the metro detroit area they have an excellent reputation. They are about the only ones in the area that still tune TPI.

 

I have used them for a TPI 400 as well, loved thier work, if it werent for the fact that I want to do some research on "real" alternate fuels, I'd use them again. I will be diong the Dynamic EFI thing for my experiments. but Howell knows their sh....tuff and they know what questions to ask, you can trust them,, ask for Troy he is the guy that burned mine

 

I have no experience with Howell's but do with Ed Wright at Fast Chip. They burned the chip for my 87 that has almost nothing stock and it runs great. Just wish they would have told me about disabling the ability of the computer to throw a code for a bad MAF. \

ArmogetRS, you have seen the frustation that caused on the cascade crews site. I would recomend Ed Wright.

 

I have seen some of there custom harnesses on street rods and there work always looks top notch. I would not hestiate to use them. They have been around since the beginning of TPI.

 

Didn't stumble on your post till now. I am running a Howell/Edelbrock TPI on a 502 in my motorhome. The first chip they burnt for me did not run well. I finally learned to do some datalogging and sent them a file. The next chip ran much better but was still a long ways off. I finally gave up and made arangements to drive the motorhome to Detroit. Troy spent all day with me straightening things out. I had some minor problems with the install, but the major problem was there was some confusion in the source file that was modified for my engine. For some reason it was confused with the ZZ502 instead of the HT502. I will have to say that their customer support is excellent. For them to spend all day with me to get it striaghtened out was above and beyond the call. Basically I ended up with a custom tune. The engine smokes now. Its pretty funny to blow cars away with a 13,000 lbs motorhome. It will light up the wheels from a 20 mph roll.

Incidently, I've begun to burn my own chips. As parinoa would have it, I continue to datalog and have seen a minor problem with the Cat over Temp. So I bought a burner and corrected the problem. Because I like to tinker, I have been playing around with the program, trying to see if I can fine tune it even more to improve mileage. While you may not think you want to spend the time to learn to program it your self, once you start looking at the program, you realise it is not difficult to do the basics. It grows on you in the same way adding any other performance parts does.

One other comment, Bill Howell is a retired engineer from GM. He has been around since the Dark Ages, and was involved in some of the first testing of the crossram induction. Search on Bill Howell crossram

 

yep...used howell with my monte carlo ss(TPI)...bougth a harness and a chip works fine. as for standing behind their product the had one connector wrong on the harness and they sent me a new one the next day...thats saying something. when i have one burned for my camaro i WILL use them again