After replacing the thermostat and temperature sender I've been plagued with problems. Initially, the car would rev itself and sometimes the tickover would stick at ridiculously high revs.

One of the problems with all this is that you lose sight of how it should be behaving. On its last visit to the garage the Felicia had a thorough clean up of the throttle body housing. The next couple of drives were crazy with self revving and fast tickover. Touch wood it's settled down. Now the tickover on startup is 1200 rpm. Very quickly it drops to about 750 rpm. Before, the car was stalling just before it was fully warmed up at every junction, roundabout queue of traffic etc. The temperature gauge was going just past the middle.

Now, the temperature gauge is maxxing at just a whisker under the middle. It doesn't stall at present when I slow right down. One thing I have noticed is that a faint ticking noise which was there is no more. I thought it might be something arcing but viewing the engine in the dark showed nothing.

The car is currently running beautifully - touch wood. I just hope it continues to do so if we have a return of freezing wet weather.

the ticking noise could possibly be the solenoid valve for the carbon filter

What's that then?

in front and to the right of the battery is a circular black can with a few hoses attached to it, there is a solenoid operated valve which lets the fuel vapour from the tank into the intake, but they don't normally operate when the engine is cold.

The car's been running beautifully, but this morning it was cold, damp and foggy. The car repeatedly stalled when coming to a halt and that ticking noise was back. When I got to work I left the engine running and checked under the bonnet. You were correct in the site of the noise. It seems to be from the region of a sensor near that cylindrical black case near the battery. It's located on what is presumably a valve. On the way home tonight the weather was beautiful and the car didn't miss a beat. The ticking noise was absent too. Can you give me some more info,Pete, about the problem and what needs doing?

if the car is running rough in the damp it would normally point towards a distributor or rotor arm fault (or something else related to it)

you can allways try unplugging the solenoid to see if the clicking stops, it wont affect the running of the engine

I thought that sensor might have something to do with the external weather conditions and was perhaps important. The car doesn't run rough and goes a treat. It's just on the few seconds before coming to a halt that it cuts out if the engine temperature isn't fully warmed up. Do you still reckon rotor arm/distributor?

my carbon filter solenoid makes a right old racket. how can i shut it up?