Old Nov 20, 2002 | 09:41 PM
  #5  
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Andy
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Joined: Mar 2000
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From: Southwestern PA
Default What's up?

If your worried about wheel hop, you have to understand what causes it. When you launch from a dead stop, your slamming a tremendous amount of power through the wheels. The problem is your tires don't push, they turn. When you first slam that power through the wheels, they want to rotate and move forward. Idealy the car is pulled along with them, but that doesn't always happen. As the wheels begin to move forward they do so by simply stretching the rubber bushings in your suspension leaving the car behind. The bushings quickly bind as they stretch as far as they can and the wheels comes snapping back when the bushings do a pretty good impression of a rubber band. You will start moving but this kills traction as the wheels shake and don't get a good grip. This vibration can be transmited back to the engine and if you have soft engine mounts, they can cause the engine to shake too (watch some cars launch at the drag strip, you can even see the exhaust shake like crazy). This also obviously doesn't help traction and all this motion can cause all kinds of strange forces on the axle's and snap them.

So what can you do? Keep the suspension from allowing the wheels to move like that. Well what exacting is allowing that? The factory EG/EK/DC suspensions use a LCA that goes between the engine subframe and the bottom of the hub. This is held by a bar that goes back towards the body and helps limit the forward/backwards motion. Replacing the rubber bushings in that LCA and the rear bars's mounting point with polyurathane bushings are one solution. The stiffer material has less give and will help hold the wheel properly centered and allows the suspension to work properly. Z10 bars and the like add another link that goes forward and doesn't allows the LCA to move forwards or backwards at all. This basically elimiates wheels hop because the LCA can't move. Both of these will have benefits other than limiting wheel hop as simply not letting the rubber bushings put slop into your suspension will give you a more stable handling car. The rubbers there for a reason though and you will suffer a rougher ride.

The best solutions would be both, but either will probably be more than sufficent for a street / ocassional track car. I personally have ES suspension bushings and engine mounts and I'm satisfied. The ride is stiffer but definately tolerable. Wheel hop is basically gone with my setup and the car launches smoothly with just a clean forwad burn (still needs a LSD). Hope that helps. Seeya.
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'06 Subaru Legacy Spec B - Stock, for now
'98 Civic EX - CTR headlights and grill, Kosei K1's, for sale
'90 240SX - SR20DET that will never get installed, project car.
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