I changed my power steering fluid today; at some point I unplugged the four spark plug wires and started cranking the engine. When I tried to "start" the engine for the first time with the wires unplugged, I could actually hear the engine as if it was starting - I heard a couple of "explosions" (power strokes), as if the spark plugs were connected. This only happened at the beginning, afterwards everything was normal. I was amazed and I'm wondering how is this possible? How can the mixture ignite inside the cylinder without the spark plug working? Was the engine "dieseling" for a second there? Isn't that harmful to the engine (if the mixture ignites by itself, it might ignite too early..) ?

Another question - if you remove the spark plug wires and crank the engine multiple times, how come this doesn't "drown" the engine with gas? Aren't the injectors spraying fuel many times during the cranking?

 

If you have the plug wires near the plugs or distributer, it can still ark accross the connection and ignite the spark plug (but we're talking milimetres here, not inches)
If you do not have the plug wires connected and you crank over your engine, you will flood your engine. The injectors definitelly pulse during ignition.

 

I removed the wires near the "distributer" side, they were pretty far away from where they were supposed to go.. Also, that would not explain why it only happened a couple of times at the beginning.

I cranked the engine for a total of a couple of minutes, 10-15 seconds at a time (just like webtech suggests) and it had no problems starting up afterwards. Also, I doubt that webtech would instruct you to do something that would flood the engine (it would suggest unplugging your injectors too or something)