ford 1.6 TDCI amber cog warning light saga

tried to find a more specific area to post but couldnt so have put here to help but am by no means suggest you take the action i have . I have a 2007 fiesta 1.6 TDCI manual  purchased oct 2021 with 72k  on which drove great could tax and insure for £160 a year NO DPF giving 46 mpg round town and 68mpg on a run happy days ...

In December THE AMBER COG WITH THE EXCLAMATION  came on , limp mode no revs past 3k still drove fine but limited power ..  check the manual for light info and it says Powertrain AUTO/SEMI AUTO gearbox fluid levels , lol its manual ..

Call AA hooks up to his computer , shows no faults just as many said dealers were saying

after reading hundreds of answers and advice on internet as no one not even ford seem to know why this light comes on ..  on suggestions of fixes by others  in order i did this

topped up gearbox fluid NOPE ,,changed diesel filter NOPE,,changed glow plug relay NOPE,, cleaned throttle body Nope ,,cleaned EGR NOPE . MAF cleaned NOPE

was having to maybe except that the glow plugs were the issue although many many people had fixed the AMBER COG with one of the above ..

a very nice man at a diagnostic place plugged me in for free and unlike the AA said GLOWPLUGS  , being pretty good with stuff i though i'll have a go , despite all the horror stories about them breaking and situated so very very much on the wrong side of the engine ..

Via youtube tested resistance of them with multimeter and hey all 4 were dead ...

during this last month the car has continued to drive great , start great . which is why i was dismissing the glowplugs but they need to come out ..

Yesterday removed all the necessary to get to the buggers but with no deep body 8mm socket , used a 8 mm ring spanner , one came straight out by hand but had no tip , i think someone had tried and put it back in previous .

Loosened others half a turn at a time drowning in Plusgas penetrant the tips broke off 2 others but after an hour the 4th nearest the cambelt came out complete ...

Now panic panic internet trawl and this engine seems to be the worst one out there for this and is used in the Focus and Volvo, Mazda and Peugeot  cars too ... options seem to be extraction kit expensive and in the limited space not sure if you can use them correctly .. or punch the tips through into cylinder and with magnet remove tips through the injector holes , some suggest soaking them overnight with auto transmission fluid which! breaks down the carbon , then and this has been done by many start the car and rev to 4k and they possibly will fire out the head ...

now and this is my point i replaced the one i got out put the cap on , soaked other 3 holes and put plug bodies back in hand tight but no caps . put rest of gubbins back she started first time is not running so rough on tick over any-more , the AMBER COG has gone out and i have driven around today fine 20 miles , thinking i may take em out to moz and give it a blast and see if they come out before pushing them in and removing via injector  inlet ..

My car still started and ran fine over Dec here in Scotland even  after a few -5 nights , do we need glow plugs in this country ? they seem to cause hassle . so advice would be check glowplugs first .

i like the little car she's great but having had Audi s and a Skoda yeti both VAGs all their bits are at the front of the engine bay why are ford engines so ***** hard to work on