I have a 1969 mustang. I just replaced the rear center section and axles to get it driveable. I took it for a test drive and the wheel hop is ridiculous. How can I eliminate this? It has a 8 inch rear end. Do the lakewood traction bars work? Any links to parts or help would be appreciated. Not looking for any parts where I have to use a welder. Thank You!!
Traction bars DO help with wheel hop, but they also clunk and clank as you're driving around.
If your car's original leaf springs are tired (and if they're original, they are definitely tired) a new set of springs can often cure the problem completely without traction bars.
Manual transmissions tend to wheel hop worse than automatics, and radial tires hop worse than the old Bias ply tires, which aggravates the situation. If you've added some ponies to your engine, and/or got some steeper gears in the rear axle, that will also help wind up your leaf springs more.
Cal-trac setups are probably the best way to go, in my opinion. They will stop your wheel hop, and they aren't nearly as noisy and annoying as slapper bars (like Lakewood). They are not as easy to put on, but probably worth it for a street driven car!
The most economical way to eliminate most wheel hop is too install a set of TractionMaster bars. They are not sophisticated, but they work very very well. Of course they came on the '66 Shelby's, which doesn't hurt either.
They don't clank !
I had very bad wheel hop on my last HiPo, that got even worse after I put the Weber carbs on and the HP went up a bit (+40) and the torque went up too. So I added the TractionMasters, and the wheel hop was history.
Yes, they have to be welded on. It will take an experienced welder 15 minutes to do. Not a valid reason to oppose them imo. It's no sin to pay someone else to do a professional job like this, and it won't break the bank.
Of course you can mitigate wheel hop by buying much stiffer springs, and give your car a miserable ride in the process, pay 3 times what TractionMasters cost. But hey, no welding.
They are very reasonably priced, so don't buy the knockoffs.
Interesting timing for this to pop up, I've been doing some casual reading around on this subject and approaches to rear suspension the last couple days, mainly in regards to Maier kits.
For those that don't know or haven't seen, Mike Maier and Maier racing is the company that developed this absolutely bonkers suspension kit. maierracing.com has some good info in their FAQ on suspension approaches, however oddly enough they've stopped offering the cantilever kit and are now saying it's overkill and to just go for their leafs. How strange..
So on further reading, it turns out that Mike Maier has left Maier Racing to form MikeMaierInc, and he is in fact still offering the cantilever kit. Maybe a licensing issue there, who knows.
Wheel Hop... Lets talk a little about what wheel hop is from.
When you stand on the gas pedal the pinion gear try's to climb the ring gear. This tries to turn the tires and until the car starts to move the pinion tries to flex the front of the spring upwards. The leaf spring tries to resist this and as we all know the stock leaf is quite week and has a hard time controlling this movement. When you drop the clutch on a hard launch this shocks the whole system and a deficient shock has a hard time controlling the sudden movement.
So we have two problems. Dampers that can not handle the shock of the clutch being let out quickly and a week front half of a spring.
Many people have tried over the years to do traction bars and most of them actually increase bind in the suspension which lock things up. Yes the wheel hop is gone for the most part but with a cost. A suspension that does not articulate freely and can ride more harsh than most want. All this and we still haven't dealt with the problem, a deficient shock and a poorly made spring.
A solution that I had come up with at the old shop was a 5 leaf front half which consisted of two half leafs and all the other leafs pushed forward. The back half had three leafs to handle the spring part of the job while the front was more of a control arm. This combined with the RCD Bilstiens that everyone uses now seemed to work really well. This system allowed a relatively high level of articulation while handling mass amounts of power with good control.
I've bolded the part I found interesting, with his springs he says the leafs are both acting as spring as well as taking on the role a traction bar would cover. Now, obviously this is a business owner with an interest in promoting his product, so I always take these sort of explanations with a grain of salt, but searching around other forums his leafs have a pretty positive reception(when paired up with a high quality shock) and if his package is as good as he says at covering all your bases, a pair of expensive leafs and shocks is actually a pretty cost effective alternative to the cost and labor involved in a 3 link, panhard, coilovers, etc etc. And even chevy was using leafs on their corvettes in some recent generations, with good results.
Curious what anyone else knows on this, as I get closer to doing my 8.8 swap I'm also looking at options and approaches to improving the rear end control of my own car. I know that a lot of control improvement in this cars is actually done in the front(arning drop, etc), but obviously the antiquated rear end suspension needs love too.
I put a set of Cal-Tracs on a 65 Fastback over 10 years ago. They worked great, are adjustable, and required no welding. I would buy them again.
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