She gave me a phone tonight saying the car wouldnt pull above 50 mph on the motorway and that it was making a 'funny noise' and had drunk a quarter tank of petrol on a 25 mile drive.

I suspected by her description that the exhaust manifold was blowing, and when she drove up the street to the front of the house it sounded like a quiet blow too, I popped the bonnet and got her to rev it and turns out there was no leak from the exhaust but the noise was actually induction. (Single point injection)

I popped the airbox off and sure enough the amount of fuel being pumped in was unbelievable, and the sound from the inlet was silly.

Now i'm not to conversant with these ford engines, however i have recently put new plugs/leads/filters/oil on the car and for the last couple of months it has been running quite the thing.

Not sure where to start but my initial thoughts were that it may be a lambda sensor, anyone else any ideas?

Its a mk3 1.3 auto :(

There also seems to be a sensor inside the body of the carb/injection unit but i'm not sure what that is, i assume an air/fuel sensor.

Good luck, could the timing have slipped, maybe need to try my exhaust on it

Good luck, could the timing have slipped, maybe need to try my exhaust on it

Your lucky i aint tried it on something else sorely tempted

Its a timing chain on the foostie i think so should be ok,

Could be the MAF sensor causing the car to overfuel.