So lately I've been breaking in my new motor. All was going fairly well until this last drive. Last week it was around 100f, and I decided to take the car for a spin. I cruised up into the mountains, doing a little drive ability tuning. No big deal, low load cells, and very light boost. I pulled over to take a look at the map, and I noticed the car was idling a bit "lopey". I figured that I was starting to foul out my B9ES, so I drove it home. While cruising, the car would drive fine, but under boost, the wide band would go full rich, and the car would stutter. Once home, I pulled the plugs, and the trailing looked fine, but the leading where fouled. I thought, now thats odd. Put fresh plugs in the car, and fired it up. Same lopey idle. Then it clicked...maybe the HI-6 died on me. While the car was running I checked to see if I could see the indicator light. It seems that its no longer on.

The HI-6 is located on the side of my Intercooler duct, right next to my turbojeff battery tray. So its not really near anything that gets really hot.

Now, I'm 95% sure its dead. But I'm kinda wondering why. I was running a gap of around .040. Do you think that it was to large of a gap for the HI-6, or maybe due to the under hood temperature that made it fail? Or perhaps old age? I did buy it used from Dave(?) of fc3s.org back in 2002 or so.

Anyone else ever have one fail? Thanks, CJ

 

No one has ever had a HI-6 fail?

 

I have one that shorted out when I install it. The small blue wire burned and caught on fire.

 

I've had trouble before burning out HI-6's when I used it (during troubleshooting) without having the plugwires connected to the sparkplugs. It was stupid on my part since the original packaging came with a BIG RED warning tag cautioning that the unit could fail if this ocurred .

Please note that it has been atleast five year since I've used this CDI and the design may have been improved to preclude this failure mode.

FWIW, Crane was always very responsive in replacing it, even when I told them it what had happened. So I'd strongly recommend contacting Crane as there customer service was always topnotch.

Hope it helps.

 

FWIW

i haven't searched to find out what gap most run but i run .23 and i have two Jacobs FC3000 amps and two MSD HVC2 coils. one of each on each leading plug. i have never had an ignition misfire (NGK 10.5 R6725) even at 9.0 to one.

maybe try regapping?

it certainly is possible to have a damaged amp. i would very carefully check your wiring. Crane is good about repairing/exchanging amps.

hc

 

Well i haven't had a problem with my HI-6 running a TII coil

I have the dual Rev limit box

 

Thanks guys. I think I'll contact Crane this week. If that doesn't work, I'll probably go with a twin power.

 

Had many failed. Their coils are just as unreliable. The only good part was that they are located here in FL so that helped with turn around time.
I stop using their products because of the high failure rates.
Their box still puts out a much stronger spark than a comparable red box!