Hi All,

A long time ago I used to run around the Volvo forums, looking after my own V40, writing guides and passing on parts / knowledge. So I'm mechanically ok up to cambelt level. Diagnosis, not so much.

Since having a company car, no need to look after anything. But now my wife is learning to drive and we've picked up my Mum's "old" Fiesta 2004 1.4 16V Silver.

I love the car to absolute bits. It's a total pocket rocket. After searching high and low for a VW polo for my Mum and wasting days, we found this just down the road from us and to be honest, what it cost and what we got, far better value than the VW. I'm pretty much a convert.

Anyway, the car has had a cambelt, service, aux belts and all the consumable liquid changes since being with me. Everything the Haynes manual said it needed, to bring it back to level.

The only things I have left to do are a small drip on the thermostat housing and the emissions light comes on from time to time.

The key issue I have is that the car seems to have throttle issues. It's lumpy when cold. I can live with that. Once warm, it feels like I have a flat spot in the early throttle pedal.

If I drive it hard, I don't seem to get an issue. But drive it normally and things don't feel right.

Last night, driving along, car just got to temperature and then all of a sudden it was fluffling and almost like it was mis-firing. It had a new coil pack earlier this year to clear a fault light. But the symptoms were similar. I turned the car off, back on again and it cleared. When I stopped, the car could barely idle. Almost like it was saving itself from stalling. A few seconds and it cleared itself up.

I noticed that the car had some throttle position sensor errors (old) when the coil pack error was read and that was changed. But the car doesn't have one from what I can tell. It has a ETM. All built into the throttle body. Any changes to these parts (the throttle pedal has something in it as well?) apparently requires a ford garage to reprogram the car to those new parts?

Is the emissions light likely a lambda sensor? Or an EGR? (If the car has one).

Any advice on where to start would be gratefully appreciated. I'll be cleaning all the electrical contacts up that are involved in the throttle / idle. But I'm not sure where to begin after that.

I have a few Fiestas being broken locally that I should be able to get bits from.

Thanks in advance!

1.4 pocket rocket? Wow ;) haha

It may be worth cleaning your throttle body & disconnecting it in the process then reconnect

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code reader time to determine why eml light on, if lambda sensor at fault then that will cause running issues.

Check the spark plug lead resistance, you could find one is 'dud' (had the slightest hint of a misfire on my mk6 fiesta for over a year, turned out one lead had 'gone'!)