No, not necessarily. The term “wheel hop” refers to when your wheels aggressively vibrate, wobble, or any kind of motion like that whenever you accelerate. If you keep driving like this, then you can eventually damage not only your factory wheels, but your axles & sometimes your transmission.
Here’s the whole process:
1. Acceleration starts with a good grip.
2. When the wheels move forward, the grip decreases; wheelspin eventually occurs.
3. In the course of wheelspin, the acceleration is very small; the wheels eventually move back again & the tire regains grip.
4. When you accelerate again, the process repeats.
Wanna get rid of it? Just “limit the motion of the wheel with respect to the chassis”, or that’s what this web site says (: (“Understanding Wheel Hop” http://www.mc2racing.com/tech/20061012a/index.html)
You would think it’s most common in trucks, like the Chevrolet Silverado, considering it’s heavy in the front & lighter in the back – but that really isn’t the case. The bottom line is if you’re one of those people that always like to take off as soon as the light turns green, you probably need to stop that. It really isn’t that big a deal if you notice it when “Wheel Hop” happens, but if you put it off & wait to fix it; then we have a problem.
Still don’t know why it’s so important to have Factory Original Rims on your car? Read this: Why are OEM Alloy Wheels so important?
Saving your car one blog at a time,
Mykalanne.