My girlfriends just bought a second hand Fiesta (1.4, 52 plate) and just recently the Battery indicator has started coming on when we first start it up in the morning. It quite often takes 2 turns of the key to start up the engine (the first attempt just lights up all the dash then they all go off).

Once we set off the battery indicator sometimes stays on for up to 1 minute and some times we will just manouvere the car round in the street to set off and all the electrics go out. This has only happened a couple of times and if we turn the engine off and back on again everything starts up fine and off we go. These are the only problems we've found with it, everything seems fine once we're driving around.

Could someone shed somelight on what the problem may be (my dad seems to think it may be the alternator) and associated average costs of getting it fixed at a garage. We don't know one end of an engine to another so we wouldn't attempt to fit spare parts ourselves.

Thanks all.