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lol @ that harbor freight tool.
I've always just used some needle nose or slip-joint pliars to depress the piston on those types of calipers.
Did you clean and grease the slider pins and check the seals while you had the calipers apart?
I forget if you have a costco membership or not, but they have 750s of Hendricks for that $18.99 (or maybe a few bucks more) regular price. Solid deal either way.
The upper mounts (or at least the passenger side mount) are hydraulic, but the rear mount is just a rubber bushing.
Do you have any other symptoms, such as excessive drivetrain slop when shifting? A squeak at startup could actually be many things. Have someone start the car while you have...
Depends a lot on driving conditions. In fresh snow, a good set of snow tires will often let you plow through some seriously deep stuff. If it's the dense, icy, packed stuff that is left over after being plowed around and driven through, by the time you're up to your undercarriage (if that)...
Stability control is very nice in slippery conditions. Traction control just annoys me though. Unfortunately in my car they cannot be independently disabled--all or nothing. Being able to manually lock up the center "diff" is nice though.
Also, people who can't tell the road conditions...
Q: If you have two cars that are exactly the same, except different in some way that is only vaguely specified, how different are they?
A: They are different by exactly the amount that is unspecified, multiplied by the factors which are affected by that unspecified amount.
I know at a lot of auto parts stores they have a little display where you can test your key fob to make sure it's actually putting out a signal. Assuming something in the electronics has not died, I suppose there could be a problem with the buttons; dirty contacts, etc.