onepointone

ive noticed it before.. but this time it made me want to ask questions. tonight was rainy night.. been raining for 2 days now. so i was killing time.. driving on some dark roads, and decided to do some burnouts.. really easy, but i like doing it just to mess around, anyway, i decided to see how hard and effective it was to powerbrake, (never done it before) so i rev to about 5k, dump the clutch, and tap the brakes.. my rear starts hopping really bad, shaking the whole car. so i let go of the brakes, and start moving and it keeps going. if i burn out on not so wet roads, or dry roads, it does this sometimes. i know the easy solution is, dont burn out, which i honesly dont do a whole lot because i want to perserve my clutch. but what could solve this, i guess i could of narrowed this down to what causes wheelhop.. but ya know.. i have kyb gas shocks, and im planning on racing beat springs.. would this help? i have a gsl-se rear end with lsd all that.. is there soemthing wrong with it possibly? could someone please help

MIKE-P-28

iTrader: (1)

You might wanna be asking qustions about your clutch too, a clutch that doesnt grab good, would act like this too

jr69187

u have heard remocing the rear sway bar helped but mine does not wheel hop and i power brake it once in a while. Jusy did it today with some old tires on my spare wheels. and it did nto wheels hop.

jr

peejay

Wheel hop is VERY VERY BAD. It breaks stuff very easily. In a FWD it breaks axles and cracks transmission case. In 1st-gens it can hammer the U-joint yokes oblong and cause the cups to spin loosely (been there, done that, had to braze the cups in place, don't try this at home boys and girls), it can tear the upper control arm mounts loose from the body, it just wrecks everything.

Try playing with tire pressure, try playing with shock rates, check to see if your suspension link bushings are loose (switching to poly seemed to help), look into getting an engine torque brace. Basically what you are combating is trying to keep the drivetrain's natural frequency from matching that of the natural frequency for wheelhop. Lowering the tire pressures really helps because it takes spring out of the tires, stiffening the bushings and mounts helps because it prevents everything from moving around which helps induce hop as the torque load causes things to rock over hard, shock the tires into spinning, un-rock as the tires spin, tire grab and cause it to rock over again, etc.

And above all, if you start to get wheel hop, LET OFF! Unless you like breaking stuff needlessly, of course.

RacerX7fb

Wheel hop in a first gen? FD's are more prone to that because of the way their suspension is set up.
One of my old SE's did that in reverse when the gas was punched. Turns out the tranny mount was bad, the rubber had separated from the metal.

RotorMotorDriver

iTrader: (1)

Mine does it in any gear the wheels spin in...I have a feeling that its related to the old worn out bushings in many of the joints in the rear suspension setup...

~T.J.

peejay

Wheel hop can happen in any car.

Wanna see REALLY REALLY BAD wheelhop? Go rent/buy/download/steal/borrow Bullitt. No plot, the only reason to watch the movie is Steve McQueen driving holy hell out of a Mustang as he chases the bad guys in their Charger. In San Francisco. A must see regardless, actually, something that any auto enthusiast must..

Okay, back to topic. There's one point where ol' Steve misses a turn. He slams his 'stang into Reverse and dumps the clutch.

Now, leaf spring suspensions have their own special problems. When you apply a lot of torque to the axle, it tries to contort the spring into an S shape. When going forward, the front half of the leaf tries to flex upwards a lot. There are many fixes for this - OEMs make the front half of the spring a lot shorter, or they use extra clamps to hold the leaves together, or put extra stiff half-leaves in the front of the spring. Aftermarket, people clamp half a pipe to the spring, or bolt on a set of slapper bars. The rear of the spring is always left alone, because it ends up doing most of the "spring" since the front half is so stiffened up. Thus, this setup works fairly well for going forwards, and works quite against you in reverse.

Now, with that in mind, and considering that the rear of the spring is not attached to anything except a lever that allows it to move back and forth, you can imagine why I cringed when I realized what he was going to do the first time I saw the movie.

BIG TIME wheel hop. Watch in amazement and horror as the whole rear axle slams up and down, full droop to full compression, like a jackhammer working an overinflated basketball. WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM.

Let's just say Steve McQueen is lucky that Ford REALLY overbuilt their drivetrains in them days...

onepointone

holyshit.. i never realized it was that bad, i mean i knew it was bad.. but not that bad. do you think after 2 burnouts, not very long, that i have already fucked somehting up? im definately not doing any of that crap anymroe till i get it fixed. damn im glad i asked about it.

Manntis

Do a visual inspection to be certain - check your u-joints and linkages for slop, fatigue, etc.

onepointone

honestly.. i dont know what im looking for when i do that. i hate to say it/admit it, but i dont. im sure my dad does, but i dont want to tell him about my problem with wheel hop when burning out, ya know?