I booked my Ford Fiesta at the end of June for a service, and to solve an uneven running problem. The spark plugs were replaced (fair enough), but then they also said that the coil pack had to be replaced, at (my) vast expense. After this the car was worse, so we took it back. This did not improve matters, so we took it back again. This time they wanted to replace the plug leads. I refused, told them that I had lost confidence in them, retrieved my car, and took it to a real mechanic, who found that the spark plug gaps had not been set at all - it seems as if someone just wedged it open with a screwdriver, leading to gaps ranging between 1.45 and 1.67mm. When this was corrected to 1mm (on all 4), the problem disappeared.(!) Furthermore the threads of the spark plugs had not been treated with copperslip, which could/would have caused further serious problems in a year or two, had I not fortunately saved my car in time.
This also means that the replacement of the coil pack was almost certainly unnecessary - but that I cannot prove, of course, because the replaced parts were not returned to me as they should have been, so this is filed under "another expensive lesson learned".
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