RF87 Front springs setup

[Peterman63]

Hi all,
I'm currently doing a full dismantling of my VD RF87 for a well needed cosmetic refurbishment.

I bought the car in september last year and, due to the pandemic, have raced it basically as i bought it for just three weekends.

After removing the front shocks, i found that the springs were preloaded on the shocks by at least 5 turns on the threaded ring!
It's a pushrod design with the shocks mounted inside the frame. The springs are marked 300 lbs.
Preloading the springs feels very odd to me. It basically locks the shocks at full lenght.
The antiroll bar is set to the softest possible...
I can only think of one reason for doing so and that is if the previous owner thought the springs are too soft.

Shocks were refurbished 2 seasons ago and seems to be working.

Are 300 lbs too soft? Should i look for stiffer ones? Or is preloading common practice on these cars?
Your thoughts and experince is highly appreciated.

/ Peter

[tlracer]

Hi Peter - this was standard practice on the RF87 in original British/European spec, so soft springs with a big preload wound on.

With the same springs and less preload it will dive dramatically on braking and ground out immediately...as we found out back in the day, when we took a brand new RF87 to the track! A good look around the paddock quickly showed that all other 87's were running similar preload to yours.

As I understand - and I'm sure someone like Greg Rice will confirm - US setup is with harder springs and less preload.

Indeed, I have an old memory that the original front springs were even softer than yours...190lbs, maybe?

[CM/FFdriver]

This is very interesting, I run 350 lbs springs on my 84 VD and will try this at the next event to see if the car will bottom out, right now it bottom out on certain braking points, not all the time but I worry about if it catches on edge right when the car bottoms out it may hurt the frame.

The only thing will it hurt turn in, I've been told it doesn't rise spring rates when you preload the springs, is this true.

Usually I turn up the rear brake bias until it may just hit but we live in California and it doesn't rain much and in 6 years of owning this car I've only driven in the rain once and even then there was no puddles, So...?

Ben