Wheel hop is also quite evident in performance modified front wheel drive cars, and possibly a tad bit worse, especially since it's that much harder to remedy it in that case, due to weight transfer working directly against you.

With a rear wheel drive car, you have all the weight transfering to the back, which puts more weight on the axle, making it that much harder for the wheels to lose traction. Of course, most rear wheel drive cars you see peeling out are usually performance vehicles, or have been modified to be such. That or the car is going around a corner, which does lots of funky shit to the rear of the car. I won't go into the aerodynamics of it all, but it's much easier to lose it in a corner in a rear wheel drive car.

In a front wheel drive car, you have one more factor adding to the problem of wheel hop: the weight is being taken OFF the drive wheels as you accelerate. For the most part you won't end up noticing it that much, due to the fact that most front wheel drive cars on the street are small economy designed vehicles, with power in the higher bands, as opposed to the lower RPM range. Regardless, when one accelerates, weight transfers to the rear, taking some away from the front. Now what happens when you take weight away from the drive wheels in this factor? It means that these wheels will lose traction.

Taking a trip to the drag strip will demonstrate this, as you see some actual performance vehicles go at it. Notice that actual drag cars with a rear wheel drive usually have a huge spoiler on them, in addition to said traction bars, to add force to the rear, keeping the wheels on the ground. A front wheel drive car usually will have some sort of chin spoiler to try to add downforce, but for the most part, lots of other tricks are used.

This is not to say that front wheel drive cars don't have their value, it's just that for the most part they either don't have the low end torque to break the wheels loose, or they are geared for track and handling rather than flat out acceleration. When going 120mph+ around corners, you can generate a lot of downforce to maintain a somewhat reasonable contact patch, front, rear, or all wheel drive
Wheel hop has been a problem in older rear-wheel drive muscle cars since, well, muscle cars were invented.

The easiest (and cheapest) method is to get a ladder bar, sometimes called a slapper, and attach it to the bottom of the rear springs under the axle. The axle tends to rock back and forth (as viewed from the rear) when heavy torque is applied. In some old drag strip photos, you can actually see the whole frame of the vehicle twist when launching off of the start line. As the tire on one end gains traction it pushes the car forward, then the other side can gain traction by the axle rotating in the other direction. Slappers got rid of this by stopping the axle from torquing over too much. As the axle rotated, the slapper hit the springs with a rubber bumper, stopping the rotation and keeping the tire on the pavement. This was not completely efficient, but it did stop the average peel out from the stoplight wheel hop.

Folks who wanted a real solution installed a different suspension system called a four-link. The ride was much stiffer, but when the driver wanted to launch their car in a real race, the four-link kept both tires firmly planted on the roadway by using the momentum of the twist against itself, like a judo expert using the momentum of an attacker to redirect their energy in another direction. The cars almost twisting in half on pro drag racing strips use four-links, as seen in pictures available on the web and racing magazines. The four-link forces the two rear wheels down, even though the car wants to twist one tire and axle point off the pavement. The torque developed by the drivetrain twists the frame, creating the very cool pictures. You'll also note that both tires in drag racers always stay firmly planted.

When the cars are moving, wheel hop is less of a factor. This is where the rear wings help push the rear axle downwards, keeping the tires planted on the asphalt.

You can tell if a car has wheel-hop issues by looking at the rubber left on the roadway. If the lines are solid, there's little or no wheel hop problems. If the tire marks start out with some gaps, then look solid, they need a four-link or a slapper.

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