1988 ford van. Timing light wouldnt work. Thought insulation was too thick. Saw a post talking about using a spring so I did. Put spring through the inducer and put it one the #1 on the dizzy. Put the spark plug wire on top of the spring. Turned van over. Gun was working well until the engine reved up. I took the key out of the ignition and to my surprise the engine was trying to keep turning over. Got scared, but finally it died on its own. Put the wiring back the way it was. And the same thing happened. Can anyone tell me what happened and how I csn fix this. Thanks.

 

Need to know what you mean by engine turning over.

Usually when it is turning over that means the starter is cranking it over.

If the engine is running ,idling, we usually just say it is running.

Can you please clarify which we have , thanks.

What engine is in your vehicle?

Do you know what it means when we say the engine is dieseling? That can happen if the idle speed is set too high and doesn't drop down when we turn the key off.
It lopes and jumps around, but finally stops trying to run.
I do not believe you did any type damage, so let's see just which condition might be taking place..

 

Its a 351 windsor. I was using an older timing light. As per my thread I tried the spring hack. The timing light has a dial on it. When I started up the van the timing gun was working but 30 seconds later the rpms spiked up, and the engine didnt sound right, so i shut off the van and took the key out. The vans engine was trying to keep itself running. The starter wasnt engaging. The engine was just turning by itself. I put the key back in and put the key to the on position and the engine fired back up. Took key out again. The engine finanaly stopped rotating aftet about a 1 to 2 minutes

 

Its hard to explain but when the key is out of the ignition, the engine isnt running, but its spinning on its own then it stops after about 1 to 2 minutes

 

How about we start from the beginning,

There was a reason you got involved with the timing light, what was it?

 

I had put in a new distributer. I adjusted by sound. I didnot remove the spout connector. Now i was trying to set the base timing, because my fuel mileage wasnt as good as it used to be.

 

I believe there is more than one problem.

Can we start from the beginning?
What was the reason you needed to replace the dist?

 

The pick up coil went bad.

 

As you know by this time those pick up coils are easy to replace once the dist is out..

Do you understand what I mean by the engine dieseling? If so, great.
What I am concerned about without actually hearing is what the engine is doing , I am in the dark.

If that problem did not exist before replacing the dist, then I would be reasonably sure the timing might be way too far advanced causing the engine idle speed to be excessive.. If it did not go away after correctly setting the timing there must be something else going on..

 

The problem only occurred when I removed #1 spatk plug from the dizzy. I put a spring into the plug, slid the tranducer over the spring and but it back on #1 spark plug on the dizzy. Thats when things got weird.