diff --git a/tests/system_test.py b/tests/system_test.py
index 821f4b34a..c00b02177 100755
--- a/tests/system_test.py
+++ b/tests/system_test.py
@@ -2080,7 +2080,7 @@ def run_curl(args, input=None, timeout=TIMEOUT):
     """
     popen_args = ['curl', '-q'] + args
     if timeout is not None:
-        popen_args = popen_args + ["--max-time", str(timeout)]
+        popen_args = popen_args + ["--max-time", str(timeout - 3)]
     stdin_value = PIPE if input is not None else None
     with subprocess.Popen(popen_args, stdin=stdin_value, stdout=PIPE,
                           stderr=PIPE, universal_newlines=True) as p:
diff --git a/tests/system_tests_http1_observer.py b/tests/system_tests_http1_observer.py
index 9aa1c9740..7b053fad8 100644
--- a/tests/system_tests_http1_observer.py
+++ b/tests/system_tests_http1_observer.py
@@ -183,15 +183,15 @@ def test_02_post(self):
 
         curl_args = [
             '--http1.1',
-            '--output', "/dev/null",
+            #'--output', "/dev/null",
             '-H', "Transfer-Encoding: chunked",
             '--data-ascii', "Start",
             '--data-ascii', "End",
             f"http://localhost:{l_port}/cgi-bin/script.py"
         ]
 
-        (rc, _, err) = run_curl(args=curl_args)
-        self.assertEqual(0, rc, f"curl post failed: {err}")
+        (rc, out, err) = run_curl(args=curl_args)
+        self.assertEqual(0, rc, f"curl post failed: {rc}, {err} {out}")
 
         # this will pipeline 3 get requests due to the globbing parameter
         # 'ignore':