The clip on the parcel shelf had disintegrated so a new one came from Aliexpress and the new plugs arrived yesterday together with an air filter I had in stock. The air filter which was Ford Genuine went in in a matter of seconds and the plug change was a doddle. These had run the full 35000 miles, having been changed the day after the car was bought having been fully serviced the previous day at 27000 miles by the Ford dealer, together with the oil, and all the filters. I would sooner trust Trump to sell me a used VW up! than believe a Ford service record. I digress. The car does varied driving, ten miles each way to the shops or 500 each way flat out across Europe. It keeps the stop start working! The plugs, when removed were a good colour and 0.72mm gap so they last well. The tip is that I have some small magnets, the size of an aspirin, one of which I fit to my extension bar. Once the plug is free, you can lift it out with no difficulty and replace the plug using the weight of the plug, socket and extension bar to spin it backwards and find the edge of the thread without the risk of cross threading. Less than fifteen minutes the lot. The camber adjusting bolts arrive tomorrow so that should sort out the slight pull to the left. A simple check with a Mallock computer* shows the tracking to be spot on but it will be measured at the CT, the French equivalent to an MOT.

*A ball of string. Major Arthur Mallock made very simple racing cars that were extraordinarily successful and set them up using what he called a string computer. Done properly, it can save the cost of having the car adjusted by a ten thousand pound machine operated by a fifty quid brain...

The old plugs had lost a bit of their pointed tips and the idle consumption dropped from 0.7 l/h to 0.5 which shows that the plugs, although superficially ok were not optimising combustion due to the slight ignition retardation caused by the larger gap and the loss of the point on the electrode needing more time for the voltage to build up to jump the gap.

In practice, of course it saves very little as the stop/start comes in after no more than a minute's running from cold which is why idle consumption is checked with seat belt unbuckled! Funny critters modern cars.