Wheel-hop

jbc426 said
On the stick car, I had to use re-valved AFCO's with their "Big Dog" double-adjustable valving to control the hit. (car's rear tire would load the rear tire and then jump off the ground breaking traction without significant rear extension dampening).

Locomotion said
The harder a car launches, the more control the suspension needs. On my Dart Sport race car, I had wheel-hop under certain conditions even with SS springs and a variety of shocks including Mopar Performance 4-speed race shocks and Competition Engineering adjustables. Never had a problem again after installing stiffer, adjustable shocks which, in this case, were single adjustable Rancho truck shocks. The springs "wrap" and "unwrap" causes wheel hop. Shocks, if stiff enough, dampen/control this action. Additionally, I always liked to keep one clamp on the rear of the spring and allow the adjustable shock to control the spring action, including separation. You can have too much separation too quickly.

Pretty common to see casual stick shift drag racers fix a launch problem with stiffer $$$ shocks, not realizing the root cause of the issue might be a clutch that's hitting the tires/suspension too hard. Basically if you fix the clutch hit first, you might not need stiffer shocks.

The significant difference between the two approaches is that stiffer shocks won't increase power production, but a looser clutch hit will.

Grant