Eliminate wheel hop?

[Fuckersmint85]

Have an 85 ltd Vic that’s wheel hopping bad, even after boxing the lower arms and adding poly bushings, rear anti sway bar, and police package shocks. Anyone have a remedy for this? Its 351w swapped with a T5, 4.10 gear with posi.

[friskyfrankie]

Any issues with out of round tires or unbalanced wheels?

[87gtVIC]

I feel your pain. I swapped in the ADTR rear control arms, adjusted pinion angle, full poly suspension and swapped in bilstein shocks and am in the same boat. I just cant fully get rid of it.

I have a full trick flow top end it on my car, mass air converted and manual trans too! Fun but am afraid I am going make something break quicker with the wheel hop.

[Fuckersmint85]

That’s so frustrating. I just pulled the engine out to have it built and I’m sure the wheel hop is going to get worse after adding more power. I have two different sets of wheels and tires and both give the same result. Did the adtr set up help? I installed station wagon tow package springs to help with the sag and have the severe duty shocks. It wheel hopped badly with the stock springs as well. Springs and boxing the lower arms and upgrading the bushings really didn’t seem to help much if at all. It wheel hops some on the street, but at the strip it’s so violent. I like to take it to the strip every now and then so I really want to solve this. Really happy to hear you have a manual too! My pedal assembly isn’t great as I made it my self with no knowledge but it works. What trans do you have? I’m sure a built 351w is going to destroy my little t5 but can’t afford a t56 for some time lol.

[87gtVIC]

I am telling myself that the adtr arms helped because they cost so much BUT it may just be a placebo effect. I do like that the upper are adjustable so I could at least attempt to play with the pinion angle. I may mess with pinion angle again if it really bugs me to further try and reduce wheel hop.

I have a brand new t5z No track experience here so just street use. I know its the weak link in everything I have so just some street use and highway cruising is all its used for and am happy with all that.

Here is some info on my pedal set up:

http://www.grandmarq.net/vb/forum/te...35#post1160135

http://www.grandmarq.net/vb/forum/te...70#post1160170

And fully built:








And in the car:

This was before the adtr arms..so looking back yes it helped but I really need to get in there and go over pinion angle again..overall I am happy but would love to completely eliminate it as it still goes on.

[gadget73]

easiest fix, remove horsepower. I've never had wheel hop from mine.

[Brown_Muscle]

Maybe it has something to do with the manual? I have a built 351, WR AOD, and 3.27's and have not noticed wheel hop, however I have not taken it to the strip.

[87gtVIC]

Who knows. Sounds plausible.

Manual will let you rev it up higher so in theory (If the engine can handle the higher rpm) wheel speed will also be higher and wreaking havoc on the rear suspension?…when dumping the clutch and banging gears?

3.73’s on my set up.

[sly]

I have wheel hop on my 93 due to axle wrap while doing a brake stand. Probably a combination of the bushings being sizable and stock arms for me, but you're not making the bushings smaller on those diff ears without an axle swap so there's probably a lot to do with the wrap/hop issue right there.

[P72Ford]

The factory suspension was never designed to have traction as a variable; I guarantee the engineers assumed that was a given with the wheezy 5.0, tall gears, and AOD. Wheel hop is typically caused by worn bushings/ floppy controls arms. If you have remedied that and the issue persists, you still have a constraint issue on some range of motion of the rear suspension. With a triangulated 4 link, the control arms limit fore and aft movement of the axle, as well as lateral movement (left/ right). If they are beefed up, and there is no bushing deflection**, then I would say the issue lies with the spring/ dampening rate. **A word on bushing deflection. With a triangulated 4 link, using anything other than spherical joints will introduce binding in the cycling of your suspension. It exists with the rubber OEM units, as well as urethane aftermarket bushings. It is worse with urethane bushings because of the higher durometer; it certainly helps with fore and aft deflection, but this could be limiting your suspension from traveling to where it freely wants to when torque is applied, thus limiting the suspension's ability to plant the tire.

Tire pressure also plays a role here; it affects the rebound of your sidewall, which can hop the tire off the ground. You have a couple of variables to play with. A slow motion camera is a very effective tool in solving this problem.

The reason wheel hop intensifies with a stick car is because the driveline impulse is much higher. There is no fluid coupling to dampen the hit.

[gadget73]

The other thing with binding, mixing boxed arms and harder bushings starts to create risk of ripping the arm mounts off the frame. In stock form the arms and rubber twist and deflect enough that the frame mounts are adequate but when that changes, the weakest point in the link moves. I don't know for sure that anyone has had this happen on a Panther, but it happens on Fox cars and its the same suspension design in the back. Its very possible the Panther mount is a little stronger to begin with, but far more likely that there are more high HP builds in Fox cars than Panthers and it just hasn't become a problem.

[P72Ford]

The other thing with binding, mixing boxed arms and harder bushings starts to create risk of ripping the arm mounts off the frame. In stock form the arms and rubber twist and deflect enough that the frame mounts are adequate but when that changes, the weakest point in the link moves. I don't know for sure that anyone has had this happen on a Panther, but it happens on Fox cars and its the same suspension design in the back. Its very possible the Panther mount is a little stronger to begin with, but far more likely that there are more high HP builds in Fox cars than Panthers and it just hasn't become a problem.

Very valid point; can't say that I have ever looked at the panther mounts very closely to understand how beefy they are. Very common for the fox chassis cars to mangle the lower mounts and separate the uppers from the body.

[Fuckersmint85]

I really appreciate all the input on this. I have a lot to think about now and how to tackle this problem. Thank you all so much !!!

[Cameronvic]

Did you ever calm the wheel hopping down? I'm putting together a burnout car and anticipating running into something like this and looking for solutions.

[massacre]

My Zephyr came with like 80Hp from the factory. It now has over 300HP. Auto trans, 4.10 gears. No wheel hop.
Suspension is Team Z upper/lower double adjustable control arms and drag springs with 10-way adjustable Strange shocks on the hardest setting. No quad shocks. It is my belief that springs and shocks are the key to preventing wheel hop. The arms do help with flex but do not eliminate the wheel hop entirely in my experience.