Be careful on the off ramps...
 

In the weather today, you have to be really careful on the off ramps, I found out the hard way...

I was driving home at 4:30 pm tonight (in a blizzard) and was exiting hwy 7 onto Brock Street (in Whitby), doing about 25-30km/h when my back end slid out and was pulling me into the ditch. To avoid the ditch I threw my car into a spin, throwing the back end in the other direction and ended up on top of the curb medion narrowly missing the light pole.

Luckily for me the only damage to my car was a minor scrape on the front driver's side rim, it was sitting against the curb with both of my rear tires on the medion and got scraped when I drove my car off of the medion...

You really need to be alert in this weather even at slow speeds...

sounds like something I did on a wet offramp in the summer I had to replace one of my steelies

Your lucky!
Corners are the worst...
I went on this guys front lawn delivering pizza...
"knock-knock, pizza guy!":p

Coulda been worse...

Glad you are OK Michelle...

Maybe it was a sign...

Buy new rims...

If not...

[window]www.carcone.com[/window]

Same thing happened to me. Travelling Westbound on the QEW .. I was getting of at the Cawthra Road exit.. and I was going 65 km/h in a snow storm.. WOW!!! What a mistake... I was turning right (on the off ramp).. and my rear end gave out and I was siding sideways (driver side first), and then to correct.. I turned away from the slide .. then my passenger side was sliding sideways first....

2 things saved me but I bet it was only 1 of the 2 (you figure out which)...
1. My luck.
2. My mad drifting skills :smoker:

Luckily nothing happened to my car or anything... I drive like I'm 7000 years old in the snow now.

sound like me when I tried to take a turn to the off-ramp at 3 times the suggested speed limit.
I'll stick with double.

Glad you're ok though.

I saw this thread this morning so I took extra car on my turns and off the ramps and all I get are morons tailgaiting me to the max. No wonder there are so many accidents and the 401 looks like a grocery store parking lot on a saturday morning. It took me an hour and a half to get from the 427 & 7 to donmills and yorkmills :mad:

I hear what you are saying, it took me two hours to go from Whitby to Yonge and Sheppard this morning. (hehe I guess public transit would have been faster for me today)

Glad you're okay.

The problem with on and off ramps these days is the fact that the majority of on ramps are all decreasing radius turns. This means, if you come hot into the corner... well you know what happens. Its also dangerous, as there is much less time to accelerate into traffic.

Same for an exit ramp.

Beautiful color on that Prelude, BTW.

hm.... it can't be that bad...
what kind of tires u got there?

glad your okay

thats all that matters, i hate the part when u actually think back on what happend and you get those shivers down your spine??? brrrrrrrrr

and thanks for the reminder....we all need one in this weather

I am still running my stock Bridgestone Potenza RE92, they are considered all-season, with about 50,000 km on them.

Thanks DR. ZED for the compliment, I still love it too. BTW, I like the pics of your car :thumbup:

If I am not mistaken.. the Suburu WRX comes stock with RE92s on them... And according to the Toronto Suburu Club... those tires are the worst pieces of **** you can ever get on a stock car (of that calibre ... WRX).

In other words... change those tires and melt them down into erasers.

Michelle, the wife and I are moving to Whitby. We saw our house last night, and they've got all the drywall up.

Where about are you? We're at Taunton and Brock St.

As for the RE92s... I put those on my Achieva SC I had 4 years ago. They were 205/55R16s. They made a hell of a noise, and didn't handle well. But were cost effective. :banghead:

always put your car in neutral when you feel like you are goin to loose traction. this will put neutral load on all 4 tires alowin you to stear. brake or stear pic one. cant do both. in bad conditions i have my foot just off the clutch. if car pulls or slips in the snow i clutch in . trust me im runnin road course tires this winter so im havein a hard time. if you are goin to hit a curb straighten your rims and hit it head on. this way you dont bend your frame. just throw new rims on and go.

Thats some good advice, that comes from an experienced place.

My only thought to that is that neutral is the last thing I'd ever suggest doing. In a majority of cases power should always be left on the front wheels, unless you must come to a complete stop.

Its been my experience that the front wheels can be used to power out of a variety of conditions, even understeer. Tapping the brakes and hitting the gas at the same time, can put a FWD car into oversteer, without hitting the e.brake. This takes less time, and allows both hands on the wheel to perform this. Its quite impressive when you get it down.

Also putting the vehicle into neutral, removes effective engine braking, even on an auto, as its done automatically.

Young Drivers teaches people to always hit neutral in a skid (there was an old wifes tale that said the ABS would disengage if you did this). Its a shoddy way to teach driving, giving blanket rules like that.

I've never found a benefit to not having power at the wheels easily without taking hands of the wheel, when in this case you would need both at all times.

Good advice, and most definately from experience RCBH.

thank you for the complement

well at the threshold engine braking ,like you said, is just like using your brakes. do you want to be on the brakes at the threshold of adheasion? no you do not. on the race track you would be at a perfect rpm so you do not have engine braking occuring in a corner at threshold. but for kids on the street in the snow and ice the threshold is in a totally different place. you do not want engine braking on ice while you are trying to steer. like i said pick one steering or braking.

you know the affect of spinning your tires when you accelerate? yup loss of traction and steering. well the same effect happens in rain and snow when you use engine braking. loss of traction and for fwd cars loss of steering.

good luck