Hi Carl,
Here's my answers:
1. If you're jacking the rear the safest place is to jack the car via the engine support bar (can be a pain to get to if you're car is low to the ground). For the front there's the suspension support cross member that you can jack from (number 1 in the pic below):
There are also four jacking donuts at each corner of the floor pan which would be used if the car was going on a garage lift.
Finally you have the two jacking points mounted in the sills near the rear, you can buy (or make) adaptors to slot into these jacking holes so you can jack the car using a trolley jack from these points. Make sure you're jacking points aren't rusted out first though!
2. I've pretty much taken apart everthing on my car (no nut or bolt left untouched!) and its all been metric, in fact you can take apart most of the car using 10 and 13mm sockets

The only oddity are the 12 pointed star bolts used to attach the driveshafts to the gearbox. If you plan on taking these off then definately buy the right tool for the job, torx heads will just strip them to bits.
3. If you have a blow then it's either gonna be you're exhaust or the heat exchangers. The exhaust is straight forward to remove, just take off the rear bumper for ease of access and you'll see it's mounted to the heat exchangers directly, no supporting brackets. If you want to take the heat ex's off too then they are attached to the engine at the exhasut ports on the cylinder heads and to the gearbox via a boomerang shapped bracket. When removing the heat ex's make sure they are well supported as you don't want to damage the cylinder head studs. In my experience getting the bolts loose on the cylinder heads is a real bitch!
4. Trip reset......you should have a cable running out the back of the speedo and down underneath the dash somewhere. I don't think mine was ever located properly. If you can get your head underneath the dash you should be able to see it.
Hope this helps!