In May, I bought a very nice '99 Fiesta 1.4 Zetec. As the car had done 42k, I changed the spark plugs and leads myself 2 weeks later (and that's about my limit when it comes to maintenance on new cars). Cambelt was changed around the same time. Now on 45k, it had it's 60k service about a month ago, just needed the rear brakes adjusting and antifreeze. I don't cover a huge mileage, but it is 4 years old virtually to the day, so thought better safe than sorry.
Started it this morning, seemed to be very rough idling for a couple of minutes, then as it warmed up, idled OK. Bit of a surprise, normally it idles smoothly pretty much straight away. The car had been sitting for a couple of days, however. On the drive to work, the car 'kangarood' quite violently for about 10 mins, but seemed better as it warmed up. Fuel economy seemed poor though.
A friend suggested the spark plugs or leads were the cause, but as I stated above, they were changed shortly after I bought it. (Champion and Halfords own brand respectively). The leads look OK, still pretty much as new, still clean. However, the spark plugs did appear to have a rather heavy black deposit on the ceramic part of the contact (the bit that's usually a nice 'healthy' brown colour) and around the top of the thread. (I'd suspected previously it was running a little rich, but as it still drove OK I wasn't worried). The actual contacts were pretty clean. Cleaned it off and reset the gaps, doesn't appear to have made a lot of difference, still kangarooing when cold.
Started thinking it could be the ignition coil.
Are they easy/cheap to replace? As I said I'm not an expert, but I don't fancy paying Ford a ridiculous sum of money for half an hour's work if I can do it myself..
TIA
J