is there an animation fix to make the character spin the steering wheel in the car without using the mod launcher?

yes, the mod launcher is deleted

this only happened with version 1.24

says: "Lucas Simpsons Hit & Run Launcher.exe will be compressed only after closing the application using it. Modifications will be lost if you close WinRAR before that "

Based on my tests, that's what WinRAR says if a file, opened from within an archive, is deleted (from the temporary location WinRAR extracts it to, to run it), so it sounds like, in both cases, the executable is getting deleted. The executable unexpectedly getting deleted sounds to me like a false-positive in your antivirus software, causing it to delete it.

According to VirusTotal, none of the antivirus software, it supports, currently considers version 1.24 of the Mod Launcher a virus:
www.virustotal.com/gui/file/f5cb0903c732ab9c2fead01d9d13e546e15cdeacf52270fbe076c0751a7a1c5a/detection
www.virustotal.com/gui/file/cd2ae0b729195effa5f778413fd06c19fc499066c0309c809d103aa634657ff9/detection

What antivirus software do you use?

Yours sincerely,
Lucas Cardellini

well, i use avast premium.
I was already suspecting it was my antivirus