whoops...



so on friday night, i decided to pick up my car and head to casey's place.  eric right behind me with his modified eclipse turbo, i figured i'd show him what my unmodified honda accord can or can't do.  so getting on the 5 north, I'm at about maybe 85-90 mph.  i've taken it at about 80-85 before with some good tread on my tires with just a little bit of squeal.  this time, my front tires didn't have much tread left, and also having someone right behind me kinda made me nervous, and that lead me braking to the apex of the curve where it eventually lost traction.  i slid mostly sideways...probably turned almost 180 degrees.  while i was spinning, i noticed that it was spinning in a good direction and i was just hoping not to end upside down or some bad position where i would need a tow.  i also thought if i lost traction this correctly, i probably didn't have much grip to correct anyways.   it was a semi narrow onramp to where if i would have corrected, there was a good chance that my car would have shot forward right to the guard rail causing more than just scuffs on the bumper which was what i ended up with.  i was lucky that no one else was in the area to take that busy onramp for those few moments when i was skidding and when i had to turn my car around on the onramp (i hit my rear bumper flush on the guard rail in the process).



while arriving to casey's house, i noticed there was some hissing noise every time front left tire rotated 360 degrees.  upon a brief inspection, i thought it was just some dry leaves that got embedded between my tire and the rim.  upon close inspection, it appeared to be a few rocks embedded pretty nicely between the tires and the rim and that's what was causing the air to leak out of my tires.  the next morning, i got the tire remounted on my tire, but later that night, i noticed that the hissing noise was still there, just much more faint.  next morning, my tire pressure had dropped about 15 psi, so i finally decided its time to get new tires.  i got the yokohama es 100's this time to replace my front two tires that were bridgestone potenza  re730's.  the bridgestores were really awesome tires.  made my car about 10 times more fun to drive with some amazing grip and added nimbleness.  my initial impression of the es 100's were they felt noticably less nimble (which was to be expected), but it might have been because the tire place had underinflated my tires.  i'll have to adjust my tire pressure, take some corners agressively (but gradually) and see how it holds up.  hopefully its just a figment of my imagination.  as long as its more like the potenza and less like the michelin energy stock tires i'll be happy.