Noob Questions
 

we should get a thread going where guys and gals who are new to all of this can come and ask questions about automotive stuff that might be basic knowledge for most. Things like terms and what they mean such as TSB's and CEL. also things like the whats the difference between a turbo and supercharger thread.

so i guess i will start off with my noob question.

when you see stage 1 and stage 2 on things like turbo and i just seen a stage 2 intake what exactly does it mean and are the differences just specific to the product itself or in general?

It's modification level.

Stage 1 means you pretty much put it on and forget about it.
Stage 2 means you will need to tune the car to get the performance/reliability out of it.
Stage 3 is pretty much racing modifications that require heavy tuning and could effect reliablity.

This is true but can have a lot of gray area. For example a stage 1 turbo kit will still need a tune, but many of them include the tune in the stage 1 kit. Also depending on what parts they are stage 1 parts can also effect reliability, all depends on what your doing.

The way I look at it is:
Stage 1: Mild
Stage 2: Aggressive
Stage 3: Race

This will vary a lot depending on the type of part/company/etc.

A thread fit for a noob! Nice....

Now here's my noob question. It's pretty general and probably applies to most cars-

Some people say it's better to warm your car up in the winter by turning it on and letting it run for a few minutes. Some say that it is okay and even better to begin driving immediately upon cold start, as long as you drive it very lightly in low RPMs to start out with.

What do you think is the best way to warm up your car in the morning?

Almost all wear takes place in the warm up phase (unless you are VERY rough on your engine) . How you treat the engine may limit that wear or make it unnecessarily worse (I hate people who hammer a cold engine), but the sooner your engine is fully warmed up, the better. Current doctrine is: start it and just drive off with moderate speed and acceleration. Warming up by letting the engine idle for 10 minutes or more just makes it take longer. It also means more gas potentially getting into the oil.

My wife used to think she had to warm up the engine by driving it harder when it was cold. *facepalm*. The things she misunderstands about cars makes noobs look like scholared experts. Needless to say, she doesn't get to drive my cars!

I usually turn the car on and let it warms up for a couple mins but when I am a rush i just drive the car off at very low rpm until the engine fully warmed up. I have done the same method on my Honda Civic for over 40k and there is no single problem with the car so far.

it's a honda, that's why. heh

+1 This is exactly what I've heard as well from everyone whose advice I respect. Implied in there "with moderate speed and acceleration" is keep the revs down until the engine is warmed up.

The deal with warming it up in winter is for the creature comforts of the human occupants, so yeah, it's a trade-off.

Your not supposed to warm up the engine then? or there's no harm in doing so?

for example. While wheel shopping it offers me to choose the offset of the wheels, but the front and back ones dont have one that will mach both...Should the front have the biiger offset or the back? help!

Let it warm up for a minute or two, as soon as you see the idle RPM lowers to about 800, drive it but do not race the engine.

I usually let it warm up enough to see the temperature needle move up to the first bar before I slowly drive off.

Noob question here!

There was a thread about snow tires where everyone was talking about TPMS and how expensive it is since something is needed to be done every time you swap tires. Some users were saying that they just weren't going to buy it.

Can someone enlighten me as to what TPMS is, why it's important, and whether I need to buy one before I put my snow tires on my FR-S?

It basically lets you know if your tire(s) is low on air. Without it, you will constantly have the TPMS light on in your dash. It's a small sensor that is attached to your valve stem and sits inside your wheel.

TPMS stands for Tire Pressure Monitoring System. They're probably talking about recalibrating it for different tires. If you can point me to that thread I can probably decipher it for you :)

Well, what you for sure don't want to do is rev it when the engine's still cold. What's ideal for the car is to drive off at low RPMs and generally drive moderately until the engine warms up. But if it's too miserable inside the cold car in winter, then it can be considered a reasonable trade-off to idle it until you start getting warm air coming out the ventilation ducts.

I would have seen if the dealer would have taken a trade-in for her. She works hard and bakes a mean casserole; mops floors too! I'm only kidding but I slapped my head when I read that.

IDK if anyone else has noticed, but when I turn on my FRS, it starts at 2500 rpms then slowly works itself down to 1200. then it changes its noise to a lower one, goes up to 1500 and goes down to 800 rpms in a few seconds. That's when I know the car is warmed up. It takes about 30 seconds on daytime California and about a minute 30 during nighttime. If i keep it any longer the Idle Engine Noise comes on haha.

Thanks! The thread is here: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showt...t=20301&page=6

The discussion about TPMS is only on the last 2 pages or so.


Soooo, my FR-S stock wheels already have this sensor? And I'm technically supposed to buy a new one to go with every set of wheels I buy?

right!

wait 10 seconds for "pressure in the boat" THEN drive off slowly keeping revs down until engine reaches operating temperature.

no idling! get "oil pressure" then drive off! your car will warm faster under load,as opposed to just sitting there idling.parts will wear more rapidly in a ''cold" engine at idle!

You can go without TPMS however your TPMS warning light will pop up without them. This can be fixed by going to the dealer and having them remove it from your computer. You don't have to buy a new set for every wheel you can remove the current set and move them to new wheels as well.



Engine wear during a "cold" start has two main components to it. First is the temperature. As the engine heats up different metals inside the engine expand at different rates causing wear. This includes compression rings, pistons, engine block, and valves. The second component is oil. As the engine sits the oil slides off the cylinder wall down into the block. This means that there is a thinner layer of oil on a "cold" start meaning more wear. This gets fixed when the piston dips itself more and more times into the motor oil. So the type of oil that you use can also be a big factor in engine wear. It's best to pick the stickiest type of oil you can find.

Thanks for adding that! A good way to make it happen is to start the engine, *then* put on your seat belt, check mirror adjustment, adjust windows, select music etc, *then* drive off. I do it that way, but I had forgotten why :rolleyes:

for me its usually start car... wait for wife to actually get in car then go

Well that's what the guys in the "Snow Tires" thread are saying (actually it's one sensor for each wheel plus programming/calibrating by the dealer). But then we learn that:
This would be my personal preference - either skip it altogether or reuse the current ones. Either way I prefer to keep an eye on tire pressure myself instead of relying on sensors which can fail - but that might be because I go way back to before there were sensors for everything and early ones were often faulty :P



With the caveat that you don't want it so sticky that it turns to molasses in cold weather, making cold starts hard all over again.

My Noob Question would be related to paint.

Is Opticoat the same as Xzillon?

What you guys don't all have turbos and floor it the second you turn your car on from a cold-start? Get with the times!

how does one know what tire/rim sizes will fit their car and an explanation of what all the numbers and letters mean.

+1.

I will wait until the temp gauge is not bottomed out and has risen to the first bar as well.

Untie the Gordian Knot and inside you will find the definitive answer to this question ;) This is one of those elusive questions that keeps getting asked because it has no nice tidy answer, particularly in regard to wheel offsets.

Some places to look for information:
- the wheels/tires section of this forum (there are already a bunch of threads);

- websites of reputable tire/wheel vendors have look-up tools where you can enter your make/model/year and they generate a list of wheels that fit your car and tires for those wheels. Tirerack is one example, and you can also contact them directly for direct assistance;

- google something like "tire size conventions" or "what is the meaning of the markings on the sidewall of tires" to find countless websites that explain the size codes. IIRC Wikipedia has a good article on the subject and would be a good place to start.