Any 1996 SSEi owners notice that nowhere on the car or in the car does it say Bonneville? Se and SSE owners exterior badging says Bonneville where SSEi owners badge near the front fender says supercharged. Funny thing.

I am thinking of putting a Bonneville sticker high on the inside of the rear ...

Another thing to try is to ensure that the starter's bolts are tight to the motor; my were loose which affected the grounding of the starter and then I had issues like yours.

Real museum piece that battery hold down bolt.

i think you found it when you said the AC pulley makes a scraping sound. Did you see metal shavings around the pulley?
The pulley bearing could be bad AND when the compressor is off the pulley may be rubbing on the ac clutch. So you would have noise all the the time but less when the ac compressor ...

Sounds like your battery was not really dead just not connected well - and I am guessing you cleaned the just the battery's terminals and not the cable ends. The cable ends need to be really cleaned well - so you can charge the battery [while driving] and get good voltage to all your electrical ...

I had the same problem and the shop simply backed the clutch off of the pulley it was rubbing against when the compressor was off. No big deal and no big bucks.

Low side pressure is the low pressure side regardless of whether the compressor is on or off. One set of hoses is high pressure the other is low. It is on the low side that you will be adding refrigerant to...while the car is turned off...but I cannot tell you which side is which.

I have been running without my compressor for a while now and I want to fix it. The compressor motor runs [noisily] but there is no air compression happening. When I recently had my struts replaced with "Monroe Sensa-Trac-as-close-to-the- original -as-you-can-get" # 171798 [the Quik strut is ...

I think it's because the platinum plugs cannot handle the heat like copper or iridium; when I did my first plug change [after joining this club] I noticed the old platinum plugs electrodes were worn down considerably more than I have ever seen plugs "wear".

Put in NGK iridium and no issues.

I have had B.F. Goodrich Traction TA's H rated a few months now and really like them. Like you say the test will be in the winter. They look good too. They are directional tread.

Used to have Goodyear Eagle RSA's and they were okay.

What did you use to clean the rims so well?