We’ve not long bought a 55 plate Ford Mondeo (1.8 petrol). It’s unfortunately been a bit of a bad buy (I hate buying second hand cars) and in the three months we’ve had it the water pump packed up, the windscreen washer motor packed up and the radiator developed a leak.

We’ve had all those fixed but now today I noticed that whilst driving the revs ‘stick’ the pedal moves freely and fine and doesn’t physically stick but the engine will hold its revs at around 2.5 to 3000 revs mark when I take my foot off the pedal. Eventually it will drop but very slowly and at one point I was able to let the car drive along at 50 with my foot off the pedal for a good 30 seconds before the revs finally dropped and it began to slow.

So, before I take it to the garage and fork out for another hefty bill is there anything simple I could possibly look at and put right myself or is it almost certainly a serious and technical problem?

Sounds like a sticking throttle body. You could try taking the air intake off and checking the butterfly and control soliniod

Not a Mondeo, but I had a similar problem with mine. Most noticeable in neutral stopped at junctions (doing between 3 and 4k revs!), but I started feeling it pulling the car too when driving as it got worse.

Turned out to be a sticky accelerator cable. Cleaned and lubed it up myself for free. Though I was convinced it was the throttle body at first.

I didn’t really think it was sticky, but it vastly improved the feel of the accelerator pedal too.

Sounds like an Idle Control Valve (ICV) google it, quite common on Mondeo’s. Quite common on a lot of cars…

Not sure what the fix was (sorry!) but happened to our 55 plate Transit Connect too. A little unnerving having to slip the clutch in a 30 zone 😆

Idle air control valve, I reckon. I had exactly the same thing on an old Fiesta. I could drive along in 4th at 30 with my foot off the throttle.

Ford wanted £200 or so just for the part.
I took it off one evening (4x torx screws and an electrical connector, took the motor off and cleaned the valve part out with GT85 and kitchen roll. It worked fine after that and was working still when I got rid of the car about 3 years later.

Yup, same symptoms on a Saxo about ten years ago, took the garage aaaaaaaaages and multiple visits to figure it out.

Funniest bit though was I was sitting at traffic lights somewhere after picking a mate up. it’s sitting there revving a bit with me not doing anything, some bloke in an Espace pulls up next to me thinking I was a boy racer or whatever, he hits his rev limiter and starts shouting at me, I raised my eyebrows and lifted my knees up and he quietened down sharpish.

Probably my best ever getaway from a set of lights, to be fair…

Cable or throttle body or icv seems about right to me too. Throttle cable’s probably cheapest place to stay though!

If it’s any consolation we have a scruffy and probably liberally abused ex lease 1.8 petrol of similar vintage. It had a 6 month period where it ate it’s air con compressor, thermostat imploded and a few other odds and sods in quick succession but the remaining 4 years have been plain sailing (pending mot now jinxed!) despite the fact it rarely gets a proper long run and does loads of horrid stop start drdriving.

Check if it has electronic accelerator pedal it’s common on Transits of that era. Sometimes a clean sorts it out as described by one of the posters above if not will have to be a replacement.