Is the wheels actually hopping?

By Clinton HulleyGolf 5 GTI Project Car
Wheel Hop
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The power delivery on my K04 Golf 5 GTI is really good. There is one thing I hate to do with this car, doing hard launches. It sounds like the car is going to rip apart. The only other car I knew of that had a similar issue was the 300kW+ 2.0 turbo Audi of my one friend. This was really a big issue for me. Why would you want to increase the power of the car to a point that it sounds like it is going to break apart?

I started doing some research on the issue. I have never had an issue like this in the past. So I started thinking about what was different from my first build. This car has bigger and wider wheels on it and I also had proper Koni suspension.

Why would a car that has a better wheel and suspension setup be worst off? There was one thing my Polo had that the Golf 5 GTI didn’t. The Polo had proper engine mounts. I started looking around at engine mount options that were available.


Looking at the standard engine mounts on the Golf 5 GTI, they are really soft. They are designed to keep all the vibrations and sounds that the engine makes out of the cabin of the car. The Problem is the engine has too much movement and once you launch the car the engine goes into a resonance moving violently around and hitting the mount end stops. It sounds like the wheels are hopping but it is the engine jumping around in the engine bay.

So what mounts did I decide on?

There was a lot of engine mount kits available for the Golf 5 GTI, so many to choose from. I decided to go with a brand that is well known.

BSH billet engine mount kit for Golf 5 GTI.

When I saw this kit for the first time I knew this is the kit I want. It is well designed and machined out of high-quality aluminum. I read a few reviews on this kit and the overall feedback was good, this polyurethane used in the mounts was just hard enough to do the job but not that had that will give any discomfort in driving. So I went ahead and ordered the kit.


Fitting the kit

I finally got the kit and it was time to install it.

Engine side mount
Pendulum mount kit

The kit turned out to be a really quick install, and you need minimal tools to do it.

Pendulum mount installed
Gearbox mount installed
Engine side mount installed

Conclusion and test

Like I mentioned this kit was really easy to install and everything went together with ease. There is something that you will have to get used to and that is the sound you hear when starting up the car. You can hear the starter a lot louder in the car when turning over the engine. It isn’t an annoying sound but it is there. You can feel a difference in the engine mountings just by trying to rock the engine before and after the install. The engine feels like it is solidly mounted to the frame of the car. When you drive the car you do tend to hear some extra sounds in the car from the drive train but nothing bad. I almost want to say that some of the sound you like hearing gets amplified a bit in the car.


I took the Golf for its first drive and was almost a bit scared to do a full launch. I took the revs up to about 4500 RPM and popped the clutch and I was amazed how smooth the car accelerated. There was no wheel hop. The car smoked the tires without complaining about anything. This was a really good mod, and worth every cent.

If you are someone that enjoys a quiet car and is not doing any hard launches then this kit is not for you. This is for someone that likes launching the cars hard at the drag strip or the occasional race.


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