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.