I thought I’d have a tinker with the rear screen de-mister in the Acclaim today. I’ve tinkered and now it’s got 12v going to through it so hopefully it’s all fine now. I also stripped the switch as it was a pig to get to stay on. Old dry grease was causing the problem and now it works perfectly. Whilst I was at it I gave the fog light switch the same treatment.

The heater in the car has never been 100%. It always put warm air out to your feet no matter what you did and recently the screen de-misting performance has dropped off. I assumed it was the cable (number eight on the image below) for the air distribution which had snapped. I’d not looked at any manuals but I assumed it couldn’t be too different from the Herald. After getting on my knees with my nice and bright BMW torch I saw what the problem was. The cable had popped off and it was floating behind the dash in an awkward spot. I managed to get it back on but what and effort that was. The cable sheath sits in a metal clip and is a tight fit. The end of the cable itself has a loop which appears to simply sit on a prong on the plastic mechanism. It has a natural kink too which means it isn’t exactly a straight job. The only way I could get it back on was by laying on my back in the footwell. I tried pushing it on when on my knees but my arms obviously aren’t long enough as I was crushing my trachea with the steering wheel. Nice!

Anyhoo, it’s all on and working. I put the fan on and heard dust and debris hitting the windscreen - the cable must have been off for years! For the first time I have air going where it should. I can cut off the air going to the feet. The top vents actually put cold air out (I thought they only provided simple ventilation when coasting along which never made sense). So, I’m properly chuffed now. But not so happy about the scratches on my wrist from the plastic of the dashboard. It looks like I’ve tried to slash my wrists whilst blindfolded.

This is rather topical with all the talk of electronic ignition.

Started the car up to get it warm so I can put it back in the garage to try and sort out this low oil pressure issue and went into the kitchen to sip on my cold coffee. I could hear the car chugging along with a low exhaust note when it suddenly stopped. Normally I’d not take much notice then pop out in a few minutes to start it again but this time I took a slow waddle outside. Sat in it and wondered where the smoke was coming from. At first I thought it was my breath but then there was a little bit more. And it was coming from under the near-side of the bonnet. And then the off-side. Opened it up and through the smoke saw some cute little flames. The leccy ignition was a little warm…

Swapped it for the old points and an old dissy cap (the rotor arm gets pushed higher with the leccy and it’d damaged the center contact) and off we went.

It’s an Aldon bought two maybe three years ago and has done God knows how many miles. 25k+ at a guess.

Just got back from the Acclaim’s MOT. I was proper cacking it for some reason. MOT’s have never been an issue in the past. If they’ve failed they’ve gone through again with no advisories in the end. Anyhoo, long story short. The tester came back into the room with joy and comments such as “that car is in crazy condition”, “better than a car a year old” and “she flew through that”. Cue big smiles! See, I can look after a car, sometimes… And she’s possibly one of the oldest surviving Acclaims?