I knew I shouldn't have declared my truck finished. That is just asking for trouble. On top of that I had put my 93 Bronco up for sale. I just put new tires on it and had the buckets reupholstered. The bronco is my back up until my mustang is back together. I think my blue truck was starting to feel a bit lonely and decided it wanted some more attention. One of the rules regarding driving old vehicles around is you always need a back up.

I went out to crank my truck one night and as soon as I moved the key to on it started and kept on starting. My first reaction was WHAT THUH!? I turned it off. Repeated the experiment and it did the same. I popped the hood(why do we pop the hood instead of opening it?) and tapped on the solenoid. Same thing. I went in the house and watched tv, LOL.

To make a 3 or 4 day long story short(er), I replaced the solenoid which wasn't the problem and checked all my connections. I pulled the ignition switch and rigged up some spades to test it and it was working fine.

I finally discovered that if I went to key on and pulled it down into reverse as soon as it caught it would run ok. AH HA! The neutral safety switch had fried its brains? I ordered one because I needed one anyways. My back up lights had never worked and testing pointed to the switch.

The neutral switch didn't fix it so I pulled the ignition switch again and was just laying on the floor board, relaxing, looking at it wondering what was going on and praying for help(seriously I was). It was then that I noticed the second blue/red striped wire crimped to the start wire in the wiring harness. I went back and poured over the make-you-blind-they're-so-tiny wiring diagrams in my book and saw that this second wire went to the duraspark in a 2 wire connector with a white one.

I have never had to understand the duraspark before but I got on the web and searched and found that mine has, of all things, a start retard function as if the timing isn't retarded enough already. Using my dvm(digital volt meter for whoever doesn't know wut that is) I probed around and discovered that this wire from the duraspark was backfeeding my electrical system as soon as I put the key on. Since it is connected to the start wire the truck would start with the key on and just keep on starting.

I searched the web for this particular problem but never found anything. I went and got a duraspark and its fixed now. For whatever reason my old duraspark fried some of its guts and was back feeding start voltage thru the ignition retard lead. My backup lights work now to so woop de doo. I thought I would just put this one in the archive of weirdest problems we've ever seen in case somebody else gets it.

Hey and you thought you were the only person that had the weirdest problems?

 

But that is half the fun of our beaters right?!
Mine was a coil wire on a 240 I6, had swapped it into my 66 from a 73 that was running great, now it was idling fine but anything past that was crappy, new carb, points/condensor, rotor, plugs, (the wires LOOKED great) was about to put the tired (275K) 390 back in, when a friend said I'll drive you ride in the engina compartment and listen......
well, at one point I had my hand on top the dist.!! found the crack!!

 

Fun stuff

 

Px2, you a rancher/farmer or hang out with same? ;)

Alvin in AZ

 

Nope, just grew up on a farm, in farm country, worked on a sod farm 3rd grade thru high school until I went into the Corps.