u/EGGWURST

Basically as the title says. I'm finally over using all season tires (they suck in snow) and want to move forward with using winter tires in the winter. I live in Minnesota where the roads get icy and on top of that I drive a small fwd car. My question is basically should I just buy a second set of rims (maybe some cheap steel ones) and put the winter tires on those, and then when winter/spring comes I could just jack up the car and swap them out? Or should I just pay for the tires to be swapped out each time? I'm leaning towards the second set of wheels because I'd already have to store the extra tires so having them on wheels wouldn't take up any more space. If I did go that route would I have to rebalance the wheels and/or get an alignment every time I swapped them?

Basically as the title says. I've started preferring the sound of old strings to new but my fretboard is getting dirty and it's time to clean it. Usually I do it when I change the strings. It almost seems like a waste of time to take all the strings off just to clean the fretboard. Like, I might as well change the strings while I'm at it right?

​I have a Toyota Solara with the 3mz-fe (3.3L v6) ​engine and I wanna swap the muffler so I can hear the exhaust a little bit. I a absolutely love the way these cars sound with straight pipes but they're just way too loud and I also don't want to get a ticket for having an illegal exhaust mod. Are there any mufflers that produce a similar sound to a full muffler delete without being obnoxiously loud? I don't plan on doing anything with the cats or resonator pipe unless that's recommended for my goals. Before anyone says anything about how it's gonna sound like shit because it's a v6, I've seen several videos of people doing various deletes/straight pipes on my exact car and it actually sounds very good, just too loud.

I recently did my brakes and bought the parts from oReily. It was almost $200 for brakes and rotors. I've also had some success with buying some parts from ebay (clock spring, door actuators etc) while also having some parts that just didn't work at all or broke immediately like radiators and heater cores. Is it usually fine to order brakes from ebay? What about from Rock Auto?

Obviously higher compression engines require higher octane rating fuel to prevent knocking, but why is it that the same engine might require regular in one vehicle but then require premium in another? For example, the toyota 3MZ-FE is in my '06 Solara which requires regular, but it's also in the 06 Lexus RX330 which requires premium. Is it just that the RX is tuned at a higher compression ratio? What benefit does that provide to the vehicle that makes it worthy of a higher badge and more expensive gas?

I've only ever bought or sold my cars to/from private parties, and the expected ​etiquette is that you only ever ask for the keys to take it for a drive if you're serious about buying the car. But what about at dealerships? Dealerships in my mind are usually unethical businesses that make profit off of other people's losses, so there should be nothing wrong with going to a few lots and test driving to your heart's content with no intention of buying, right?

I'll say mine. When I got my first car (2006 Odyssey) I knew nothing about cars, but I did know that the mechanic told me it leaked oil and that I should top it off from time to time. So I bought a quart and poured most of it into the wiper fluid reservoir and went on my merry way. It wasn't until I was learning to replace my brakes a few weeks later with someone much more knowledgeable than me that he suggested I top off the oil and proceeded to put oil in the actual correct spot. It then hit me and I told him where I had put it before. Luckily we were able to get all of the oil out of the wiper fluid before it hit the system. I just imagine if I hadn't figured that out and I had sprayed oil all over my windshield while on the highway. I laugh about it now.

I constantly hear about how people hate modern cars and how they have so many computers and how the radios aren't standard and can't be replaced and how people miss manual transmissions and that a lot of people think modern cars are ugly (myself included). My question is, if a company were to emerge that produced bare bones cars that got whatever their specific task was done, and done well (so a truck would be capable of towing, a coupe would be sporty and responsive etc) but had essentially no luxury features pre-installed (no radio, no speakers, no heated seats​, definitely no car play) but with space for all of these things to be installed later if the owner wishes, would there really be a market for that? Or are cars progressing the way they are precisely ​BECAUSE there's demand for it? Would you personally buy a car that was $20k cheaper than competitors if it was as bare bones as it could get, assuming it was still reliable and could complete the tasks expected of that type?

For anyone wondering why I'm asking this, I'm an engineering student with a strong motivation to dream big and start a business. I never saw myself doing something car related for a living but last year I was on an engineering team that designed and built a formula car and I fell in love with everything about it. I'm curious to know if y'all think this would be a start-up even worth bothering with or if I should save my energy?

Edit: I'm just gonna throw in here because it wasn't mentioned before, but one of the biggest and most widespread concerns about modern cars is the privacy violations that come along with the integrated computers. Nissans And Kias collect information about your sex life. Honda collects information about your driving patterns and sells it to data companies who then sell it to insurance companies. Even if carplay is desired by most people, most people desire to not be spied on. maybe that just means a more ethical car manufacturer with more of a backbone for its customers rather than a bare bones car with zero amenities though.

Yesterday I was driving (2006 Toyota solara) and noticed that while backing out of my parking spot it felt like there was a 2-3 second delay from when I hit the gas pedal to when the engine started revving up. Then as I was driving I noticed the same thing at first after every red light, that I would press the gas and it would take 2-3 seconds for the car to start moving and then it would lurch forward. It seemed to only be happening from a stop and not once already moving ​so I was thinking it would be a transmission issue, but then it just mysteriously went away after about 10 minutes. Has anyone ever heard of this or experienced this?

I'm a student and I'm leaving at the end of the week and need my car sold before then. I've had limited success with marketplace despite a very fair asking price. I've called Peak and Finish Line and they both seemed to think that the car was too old for them to buy from me (2001 Lexus RX300). I don't want to junk it either as the deals are terrible and the car still runs and drives perfectly fine. Does anyone know a place that will buy older cars? Hopefully I get a good bite on marketplace but I need a backup plan

I have always heard that top tier gasoline is better for engines and injectors, that it cleans out carbon deposits. Recently though, I saw a video where a mechanic said to never use this fuel (or the additives sold seperetely as fuel system cleaners) on direct injection engines because it "kills the injectors". He specifically mentioned to never use chevron because of the techtron they add to the fuel. Is this total BS, or does he have a point?

TL;DR: My long distance girlfriend says talking to me drains her energy.

Sorry in advance for the long read. We've been together for 2 and a half years, with the last few months being long distance. I'm moving back home in less than a week, so hopefully the problem just resolves itself. Immediately after starting long distance, I noticed she wasn't very responsive. We'd call a few times a week and text a few times a day and I was generally fine with it. She has just a flip phone and an iPad and she would text on the flip and occasionally video call on the ipad. Soon though the frequency of texts decreased, and when I commented on it she said she just didn't like texting on the flip phone but that she would try harder. Then we'd enter a cycle where she would call me almost every day for a week, and then the next week I'd barely hear from her at all, call or text. When she visited me in February she said she was going to try to call me every day for the rest of our time long distance, which as soon as she left became apparent it wasn't gonna happen. We went back to the on and off cycle. Finally I brought it up a few weeks ago and she explained that actually, texting and calling me feels more like a chore or task that needs to be completed than something she actively wants to do, and that in her ideal world we wouldn't really talk at all most of the week and then catch up with a call at the end of the week. Obviously, it doesn't feel very good for the person that you love and seek out attention from to tell you that talking to you drains them, but she assured me that she still loves me a lot and that it's just the long distance (apparently, she has no object permanence, so it's hard for her to gain the same connection with me through a screen that she gains in person). After that conversation, I decided I would leave her alone more and just let her reach out first from then on. But she began calling me every day and texting me all the time, up until a few days ago. I've been pretty much ghosted since then. I called her yesterday just to make sure she was okay because I knew she's been sick this week, and I got pretty much 5 minutes of her time before she had to go. Haven't heard from her since, either. Now my brain is going back to her telling me that calling and texting me drains her, and it's hard not to be hurt by it. But I also can't blame her since it's not her fault. I'm moving back in one week so it's tempting to just ignore it and hope it never comes up again, but part of me wonders if this is actually the start of a bigger, more serious problem. I should mention that all the time we've spent in person (which was most of our relationship) has been great with little to no problems.

Rear seats don't go down because of the roll bar. My only idea is to DIY basically a passageway from the trunk through the back seats, meaning cut a big hole in the back seats that goes through to the trunk. Any other ideas that maybe are a bit less reckless?