mjt

Sounds like a problem with your alternator not charging. That might also explain why your old battery died. Have you tested the battery voltage with the engine running? If the alternator is working properly it should be around 14Volts. If the alternator is not charging properly I think the ECU will prevent the heated screen from being switched on because of the high current it takes.

The battery on our Mk3 is also 7 years old. When we first bought the car nearly 4 years ago the stop-start worked occasionally after a long run but hasn't worked for at least the last three years which suits me just fine.

Sorry I took so long. I still hold to the fact that, surprisingly, there's enough heat in water from the cold tap to clear the ice instantly. There is a suggestion that using warm water can cause it to re-freeze more quickly. I think it's something to do with evaporative cooling but maybe there's someone on here with a better knowledge of physics who can confirm or deny it.

I've never liked the interior of our Mk2.5 as much as our previous Mk1.5 Ghia, but I am an old man . . .

You don't need to use warm water. It works perfectly well with water straight from the cold tap and produces much less stress on the glass. You may have been lucky so far but if you get a chip in the glass the stress will likely crack it.

That looks much more sophisticated than the one in my dad's car. 😀

Me too. The only way I realised which was which was because the timer switches off the front screen quite quickly. I can remember that in my father's car the front screen was demisted by a bakelite-cased heater with bare wires that attached to the glass with suction cups. That'll give you a clue to my age . . .

Surely the bonnet release is not the latch, it's the device (key or cable) that "releases" the latch. In that case the sensor should be covered even if it's integrated into the latch.

Blue smoke usually means it's burning lubricating oil. At 100k it's possibly getting a bit worn or you may have stuck oil control rings or leaking valve stem seals. If it goes away when warm it's probably not the valves though.

It's hardly your fault. As far as I can see the Ford User manual doesn't tell you this. I only found out by accident when I forgot to press the clutch early on in the ownership of my car.

It's current it'll take from the battery, not volts, and Darren is right, 60W at 12V = 5 Amps. If you reckon it's going to take 25 minutes that'll consume roughly 12 A-h of energy.

1000k = 1,000,000

I thought I'd just round off this thread. I re-ordered and fitted the correct size Pagid discs. Interestingly when I checked the runout on the 278mm discs it turned out to be greater than with the 300mm, although still well within tolerance. Having now run for just over 800 miles since fitting I can say that the new discs and pads seem to have noticeably more 'bite' than the old Ford originals, although those had started to suffer from rings of corrosion spreading inwards from the outer circumference on the inner faces so that may have compromised their effectiveness. I've had no problems with squeal and found they create much less dust than the Ford ones so overall I'm extremely satisfied with the result.

Afaik TPMS is a legal requirement on cars of that age so removing the sensors would be illegal and probably an MOT fail.

No doubt they'll soon be along to dig it up. 😁