Picked the Escort up first thing this morning, ride is loads better now.
Then a quick clean of both cars.
Decided to replace the cheapo coil pack with a Bosch one, as leads kept pinging off.....fired her up, ran loads better and when warmed up leads didn't ping off! Revved up a bit, backfire has gone, and idles better but still a slight misfire.
So, as mine is a early efi it has a Weber idle speed control valve that is meant to be cleaned every 10k miles....don't think this had ever been done!
All clean and operation checked.
Then I checked the breather hoses, the crankcase breather filter had broken down and blocked the hose between breather filter and air filter housing.
I have unblocked hose and cleaned it out, all other hoses are fine. Will get a new breather filter and put it all back together. Have also checked all electrical connections and cleaned with contact cleaner. Hopefully the car will run ok now, and I can get the co2 and emissions set up on a diagnosis machine. Fingers crossed.