Any truth to this?

 

I cannot comment on the blown motor part but I had the crane HI-6 and it did have a fault and caused quite a fire in my engine bay. Thank God I had my extinguisher. I took it out fixed the wiring and the car was fine. The unit was confirmed defective by Crane. I wouldnt recommend the HI-6. I am sure there are many forum guys who use them and have no problem. I HIGHLY recommend, IF YOU NEED TO UPGRADE the ignition system, the HKS Twin unit (Has a plug in harness)or the Jacobs unit, wired correctly BY THE BATTERY, not at the coils like Jacobs recommends. (That can burn out your leading coils on the FD) If you do it by the coils, use the 2nd gen coils or upgrade the coils to handle it.
Good luck, I am sure there will be many opinions. But I would stay away from the Crane HI-6.

 

This was debated awhile back in this forum by turbostreetfighter and rice racing. If you do a little search I think you could find it. It was a very interesting thread. I would give that a shot. I think both of them have experience with the crane units.

 

Ummm... that is where I got that QUOTE!!!
I did do a search.
There was no definative answer on the thread that you pointed out, thus my post.

 

Through a failed HI-6 unit, I posed a few questions on that same thread.

It was concluded that you must hook up the Blue Wire b'c that "cylinder select" wire affects the multi-spark and rev limiter functions. Under "8 cylinder" mode, the ignition fires once for every two revolutions of the engine. For "4 cylinder" mode, the ignition fires once every one revolution of the engine. "Revolution of the engine" = one RPM. The rotary engine (leading coils) fire once per revolution, therefore it fires like a 4 cylinder. If you have the multi-spark turned off, then it really doesn't matter. The rev limiter doesn't really work correctly without added components.

This is the reason why you must connect the thin blue to +12VDC for 4 cylinder mode.