nerdstrike

With regards to fluids, some of them degrade by collecting water. Chiefly brake fluid and engine oil to a lesser extent. The water in the engine oil can evaporate off with good hard use, but brake fluid becomes very not fun if it gets moist, so you should keep it and the clutch fluid on periodic schedule. I'd do my own oil changes with an oil extractor like a Pela, then it only costs you about 50 quid a year and you don't have to take the car in unnecessarily.

You could try to trash the baffling in the muffler, but that would be destructive. No guarantees about surprise resonances or drones either...

The most likely triggers for car alarms are: Leaving windows down while locked Leaving a phone in the car Scrotes breaking your windows You can deactivate the alarm via the keypad in the glovebox, using the code you get with the car. The alarm will also stop (temporarily) if you unlock the car with the remote. Be aware that the doors have an auto-relock after 20 seconds if you should unlock by remote and not open a door. Alarms will also trigger on a ferry, when the tilt sensors get a workout and the deck vibrates from the engines. If there's something wrong with the boot/door/bonnet lock sensors, then you would probably lock it with the pathetic emergency key.

The Ah rating of a battery will be almost directly proportional to the amount of sulphuric acid and lead it has in it. Both of these things are heavy.

My 45 Ah battery seems to be able to handle about 3 weeks of sitting idle before cranking gets marginal. It's getting on for five years old now. A 65 Ah one in good nick should by extension go at least one more week. If I were off for a month I'd leave it without the battery.

I believe the driver assist systems will quit on you for running an undersize wheel across an axle. It should just throw a warning and leave you to it if it's anything like Mazda electronics, so you'd be able to drive but without VSC or perhaps even ABS still operating. Think kindly of your diff!

Some extra pressure helps stabilise the tyres under hard (and bumpy) cornering. It also has the side effect of making the handling sketchier. The surface is fairly slippery anyway, and I was surprised by how little stopping power I had. A couple of the RX8s that didn't add pressure (or had aftermarket suspension doing funny things?) wore all the tread off the shoulder of the right front tyre. They were going at it hard, but it was a shame to have toasted tyres with good tread in the middle. A few extra psi like Angelina said might not go amiss, depends on wheel camber and what kind of lead boots you wear.

Well, the lack of relay clicks would imply the lights are not being turned off by the relay, but by lack of oomph/shorting/ground issue. Apparently HIDs have ballast to get the filaments lit. You're not the first BRZ-alike owner on the Internet to have issues with high beams, perhaps a faulty ballast can't generate enough voltage to get the second filament going?

Flickering is rather ominous, and definitely into electrical gremlins. Lucky it's summer and the days are long. How old is your car? Is there any relay clicking when they go off on their own? If you have an OBD reader, what's the voltage like when the car is running? The loss of full beam suggests a fuse may have gone, but what caused it to go? Do you have any signs of rust in the engine bay, particularly where ground wires go to the chassis? Can you turn the headlights on yourself ignoring the auto setting, and does the same thing happen? Do you have any custom electronics in the car, like dashcams and amplifiers?

Eek! The air vent system is deeply buried.

It won't run lean just because you derestricted the exhaust. You're almost certainly seeing the "where's my cat gone?" warning, but the fuelling is decided by other means. It's only if you've damaged your O2 sensors that things will get weird. Given that you have a warning light and you can't guarantee what it means, I advise you to get a code reader on it. The code reader could also tell you what the fuel trims are like by showing how far off the base map it wants to go. It's £15 well spent for immediate diagnosis.

I'd totally have one if I could afford it, but the jokes write themselves.

Did it say "Aus dem Weg du scheisse Japanisches Auto!"?

I'll see if I can make it nearer the time.

The alcantara finish does trap heat a bit, but nothing burns like black leather that's been in the sun.