What work has been done on it recently?

The Ford dealer repaired the leaking fuel pipe on my first Fiesta 1.4Tdci under warranty. As I drove away, I noticed the fuel gauge going down rapidly. The rear-view mirror showed a trail of diesel on the road behing my car. I just got back to the dealer before the tank ran dry, and dumped the rest of the fuel on his car park.

That was a few years ago and I assumed that, since there are numerous reports all over the Internet of leaking fuel pipes on this model, that Ford had improved the quality of the pipes by now. Perhaps a bad batch of pipes has found its way into Ford's cars? I wonder if we'll see more reports?

But they won't 'keep on' failing if they're repaired properly and fastened down to stop them vibrating. The usual failure is near to the priming bulb, and this causes fuel to drain back to the tank whilst parked, so that the car won't start again. My second Fiesta suffered a crack in the plastic pipe due to the priming bulb vibrating because it hadn't been fastened down - a plate was missing which should have fastened it to a bracket on the side of the air-filter housing. A local garage fixed this by cutting the pipe at the crack and using a length of 'standard size' fuel pipe, warmed up in a mug of hot water, which he slid over the Ford pipe. The chap pointed out that the Ford pipe is just a bit narrower than the standard size pipe which you buy in the shops. Anyway, I went 'round the engine bay, strapping down anything which could move and since then and another 80K miles (total milage now 174K) there have been no further problems.