Hello everyone this is my first post

I recently took charge of my fathers old Escort Encore from 1991

An old car but has only 10000 on the clock and recently had a full service

I drove it for a couple of weeks and all was fine but unfortunately has developed a fault.  The symptoms are as follows

1)Firstly this is an intermittent fault

2) It generally occurs after starting on a warm engine and when slowing down

3)The accelerator will go lumpy and I have to rev the engine harder to keep up speed

4)If I come to a halt the engine will not hold its revs in idle and usually stalls

5)The car will then start up as normal but I have to put the pedal to the metal to get it to pull away in first, or it will stall again

6)If I pull up with the engine still on and put into neutral the rev counter will go up and down as if I am revving it

I took it to a garage who weren’t that interested in dealing with an old car.  They road tested it and couldn’t replicate the problem so could do nothing else.

I have put a fuel system cleaner through it but has made no difference

I am now stuck in the position where I need a car for work, I can’t drive it or sell it on like that and it seems that unless a garage can replicate it they can’t do anything.

If anyone has any suggestions on this I would be extremely greatful

Sounds like there could be an issue with the carburettor and the air/fuel mix needs adjusting. 
My old 1994 L reg Escort had the same issue when I picked it up. It stalled upon slowing down and the clutch being depressed. I had the air/fuel mix adjusted and it was fine after that and ran for many months with no issues. 

Hello

thanks for reply - is this something I could do or does it need to go to a garage

Best regards

It could be a simple job to do yourself if you find the right info online or through a Haynes manual or something. 
IIRC, it's just a tiny screw with a spring that you turn to adjust the mixture. It may only need a very tiny adjustment but then again, it could be something deeper than that and I would imagine that it would be difficult to get hold of parts for it now. I'm not sure what year Ford switched to fuel injection systems as standard on the Escort.  
I've heard that some garages don't like to work on the older cars because the mechanics aren't trained on older engines. 
I would speak to a few garages and ask for advice as I couldn't tell you exact information about the engine or what else the problem could be.