LAST NIGHT I WAS RACING AND WHEN I TAKE OFF MY WHEELS STARTED TO HOP IS IT NORMAL IS THEIR SOMETHING I CAN DO TO STOP IT

 

It is entirely normal. But heres a few things that might help:

1. Proper launching of a stock car. Launch at 1200rpms and feather out the clutch rather than dumping it.
2. Motor Mount inserts. www.modernperformance.com A cheap way to avoid serious vibration and eliminate some (not all) wheel hop.
3. Solid Motor Mounts. www.modernperformance.com, www.turboneonstore.com etc. Vibration is a side effect of these, but with proper launching and solid MM's you can elimate just about ALL wheel hop.

 

remember you have front wheel drive. So think of this, when you accelerate you shift the engery from the front to the back of your car. ON a rear wheel drive car that is fine, it'll just put more pressure on the rear end, that of which is pushing you foreward. While you on the other hand u are trying to pull yourself foreward. So when you give it gas your front end, which is pulling you, will also lift up temporarly and then go back down again, gain more traction and continue to do so until your moving fast enough. On some top end race cars they have actually appeared to do a wheelie becuase of this. then they started installing what looks like a wheelie bar but really just presses the front end down for the launch and lifts up after the launch becuase it isn't needed after that.

you could always try putting one of these on.

 

I have the wheel hop, too.

My car jumps like a brotha, but runs like a motha.

 

Wheel hop can be controlled through stiffer or solid motors mounts. I have developed solid motor mounts for the Neons for sometime now. Check out our website http://www.howellautomotive.com The AFX mounts are the ones that I designed and have been around the longest. Even Darrell *** racing uses modified versions of our mounts.

 

Nice - I need one of "those" wheel hop solution kits.

Seriously, wheel hop isn't created by the simple fact that this is a fwd car. Rwd cars can hop, too. It is caused by the play our suspension has. When you hit it hard, if you watch in slow motion, the wheel actually is bouncing front to back as well as up and down. The front to back motion contributes to the wheelhop more than anything. Lowering pressure so the tire can take up some of the energy at launch rather than the control arm doing all the work will eliminate the hop.

 

Very good point. Ever launch a old muscle car with leaf springs? Most will wheel hop like mad until you put a set of traction bars on them, or something similar. I just remembered my old '89 Merkur XR4TI (rwd) would wheel hop so bad it would pop open the glove box and dump all the contents on the passenger side floor! Ahh the good old days....

 

yeah yeah yeah. these dudes are right i justed wanted to add a little something. also i think wider wheels might also help a little bit.

 

Well on a Mopar RWD (leaf) putting on traction bars hurt the car. All you need is pinion snuber to fix the problem. Axle wrap (wheel hop) on a rwd is the same as a fwd. Look at your engine and trans, it takes the same place was your axle. It is engine wrap causing the problem. Just as a pinion snuber stops the wrap, so will solid motor mounts in a fwd.

 

My .02 on this;

I think there are multiple factors at play here. First, the forward and back motion of the A frames caused by the wheel pulling forward. Second the rocking of the motor as it is on axis with the wheels, and there is considerable play in the stock motor mounts. But it seems to me that since the force that flexes these two "weak points" under acceleration is in one direction, than it must be a cycle of breaking and re-gaining traction that causes the "hop". This would also explain why, as Post advises, letting some air out of the front tires would help, though I don't know if giving more sidewall flex is the reason. Rear wheel drive cars have commonly lowered rear tire pressure to gain traction by getting more tire surface onto the pavement. Getting more traction would keep the rubberband (flex in the A's & MMs) under tension and avoid the ocillation effect (affect, whatever) caused by tension/release cycles. I would consider it a safe bet that all three (traction, MM, & A frame) are factors in this problem.

As far as the motor mounts go, I'd like to see what the old school people think of this. I've been thinking alot about the solid mount/vibration thing lately. In "the old days" people used to use something called a torque strap on V8s. For those of you unfamiliar with them, it is a metal cable/strap that is fixed between the passenger side shock tower and the engine (on inline mounted engines). When not under load it would be less than taught, but when the motor started to torque it would hold it back like a tether. The advantage to this over solid MMs, was that there was far less vibration during "normal" driving. I've been wondering if this technique could be adapted to a transverse engine. One of the possible problems could be finding a strong enough anchor point up near the radiator support, as the motor must roll back under load. I've even wondered if it could be done on the bottom of the motor and anchored under the front floor. I haven't had the chance to check out how everything moves and flexes yet with these cars, so this could turn out to be impractical, But I thought I'd see what others thought of this, and if it worked it would be more traffic friendly than 4x4's solution.. LOL