Trouble with block, and content that should go into it

Could you give us some more details – Are you using the Views module to create your block? What fields from the "spotlight" content type are you trying to display?

My spotlight content type contains only a title and a body, which is a text field containing some php to make a collapsible list of specification (height, weight, width, engine, etc.). I will have spotlight content for each model in our equipment inventory. Each model will have a node (content type = equipment) to describe the equipment and a picture. The equipment content type has a field_spotlight (node reference) where the spotlight (for a particular model) can be selected from a list of checkboxes.

In Display Fields I have:
Label: above
Teaser: title (link)
Exclude (not selected)
Full node:
Exclude (not selected)

With the above, the spotlight does not appear in the main body, nor in the spotlight block in the right sidebar.
If I change Full node (above) to read full node, the spotlight appears in the main body of the equipment node.
I'm obviously missing something. Do I need a view to make it appear in the spotlight block in the right sidebar?

I think there are a lot of things that could potentially be the problem.

How is the block being created? If you're using a View to create that block, you might want to go through views and export the View and paste the export code here, so one of us can take a look at the detail of your View and give some suggestions.