Rear Wheel Hop / Bump Steer

[wparsons]

You're a brave man driving those tires in those temperatures, and probably the source of what you're describing. I got rid of my stock tires when the temperatures were around 8-10 C consistently, 30F is about -1 C, much colder than I would want to be running those tires.

[sprintamx]

Hard tire, stiff sidewall, stiff-ish stock suspension = jitters and hops.


I've actually not been disappointed with the grip of these tires in 40+ temps, and even in the rain. Let the learning continue!

[wparsons]

The stock tires turn to hockey pucks around freezing too, so they'll feel worse.

[sprintamx]

Funny, after all the talk of the Primacy being that "Prius tire", I never really considered that it would be so questionable in the cold. Well, truthfully, I never thought about it much at all considering I knew from the start I'd be moving to a performance tire.


The great internal debate right now is whether to simply swap tires and be done, and/or move to coilovers. But, that's a different issue for a different conversation. Except, if folks who have switched to other dampers or a full coilover system still experience wheel hop.

[wparsons]

Coilovers won't make a summer tire work better in freezing temperatures. Grippy or not, the Primacy tires are definitely summer only. I wonder if you're actually getting wheel hop, or if the tires are just too hard and skipping over things on the road?

If it's real wheel hop you'll feel the shifter bouncing because the diff moves and transfers the vibrations up along the driveshaft to the gearbox, and into the shifter.

[sprintamx]

I agree that coilovers won't improve a summer compound in the cold.

Trying to be as accurate as memory allows . . . my recollections on the episodes of "hop" are that--even on straight line driving--when I run over significant imperfections, seams, bumps, etc., the rear will slightly veer to one side and the the revs will slightly bounce. Perhaps a wheel became unweighted, or the vibrations transferred as suggested. During these moments, I don't think I was ever on the shifter so I can't comment on feeling vibration in the driveline through the shifter.

Once the weather improves, I'll attempt to recreate the experience and have hold of the shifter. I know just where to try . . .