Lots of talk on here. It's happened to my 62 Dig-T twice now and I have 'fixed it' twice. The tell tale sign (apart from the car nut starting) is that the remote fob will not lock the car - the buttons on the door handle will. Here's my fix.........

1. Far away from the car, remove the battery from the key fob, press all the buttons and hold for a few seconds. Put new battery in (CR 2023). Get in the car and push the little button by the gear selector to be able to take the car out of park. Put it in neutral and back into park. Hold the fob right over the start button while pumping the brake....

The Italian tune-up heats the engine up enough to burn off carbon deposits. It was invented, so to speak, for people who only do short runs where the engine never heats up fully. So you could be right. :)

Not sure it will work for DGI problem....

I suspect it isn't an easy engine to strip and rebuild. The cam belt which has an oil bath is quoted as being a 7 hour job to replace at a cost of £800. It is supposed to last for 10 years or 150000 miles, however HJ has a failure at 108000 listed in the fiesta good/ bad section.

I never took much notice of that traditional 'sell at 100k' mindset that people had, with cars of the nineties having the potential to last much longer, but it looks like this type of engine is going to bring that back with a vengeance. These cars will be worthless at that stage once people have got used to the intended lifespan.

I think this is the last gasp of the internal combustion engine (for private transport) before electric vehicles are developed further. I still don't see how they can all be charged (which will presumably be at night when everyone is home from work) unless the national power grid is uprated. A couple of years ago we were being told that there was no spare capacity, and that's just for todays demand.

Well it seems it is related to the fix. On further reading the update messes with the EGR valve in that it opens and forcibly shuts the valve. It also makes it work 3 or 4 times harder than it usually does (not to mention constant regeneration Im getting with the car now).

Seems there arte thousands of people in the same boat and its having issues in all of Europe and Australiatoo...

Just had a quick look at that thread. Two posters who do well below 10,000 a year complaining their diesels are suffering problems.

2012 car which had done 36,000 in four years and the one above 17,000 in 2 ish years.

When will car buyers learn? Diesels thrive on high mileage. Low mileage kills them.