thingo

The helper springs should be fully compressed at rest.

fejjj

Yeah right now they are almost completely depressed.

Or is unpressed?

MAGK944

There's some confusing assumptions in this thread. When I had KW's fitted and iirc they had a tender spring in the rear not a helper. A tender works with the main spring were a helper doesn't. A helper is just a flat spring with nominal rate, a tender has a spring rate.

Maybe you are all referring to the whole rear coilover as a "helper" as it works with the torsion bars, idk, I think posters here are confusing the matter with the terms used.

Going back to your issue.
Are you sure your car is level? If it is biased to the rear to start with you are shifting more weight there and the rear springs and rear end will squat more both statically and especially so dynamically.

Did you pre-load the rear coilovers? With the weight on the torsion bars only, gradually wind the rear coilover sleeves up until they barely start to raise the car. You don't want the coilover to bear all the static weight but neither do you want the torsion bars to do the same, they work together.

I'm quite sure that is all I did with mine and they worked great using the recommended kw valving settings.

fejjj

I agree regarding the terms.

The picture below shows what they look like.

I really don't know how my mechanic installed them in regards to preloading the coilovers.

The rear is about 1/2 inch higher than the front.

333pg333

I always assumed the flat one was really just a locating spring. .

Van

That little spring is a helper - it's job is to prevent the main spring from coming off the perch at full droop. It's not providing any real spring rate help.

A tender spring is part of a dual-rate spring setup - where you have one spring rate until the tender becomes fully compressed, and then you have the main spring rate. The logic behind that is to have an approximation of a progressive spring - small surface irregularities are dealt with a lower, softer spring rate, but major compression (weight transfer) is dealt with a higher, stiffer spring rate.

When you're doing the math on a dual rate spring system, the spring rate is 1/2 of the average of the two springs. E.g. if you have a 400 main spring and a 300 helper, your spring rate is really 175 lbs/in. In this type of setup, you usually want the tender to fully compress with about 1/2" of compression from ride-height.

This is, of course, more complex than what you're dealing with on your KW setup.

As I said in the PM, I think you should remove the torsion bars completely and just run a larger main spring in the back. (Or get a pair of 30mm torsion bars, and remove the rear springs completely.)

zeusrotty

I sent you two sets of springs. The set I got the coilovers were what I considered the stock set. I wanted something a little tighter so that's what they recommended. You should maybe try the ones that would have been the originals that came with the KWs when the original owner installed them.

But that being said the owner of the car effort me did not have tbars installed with these springs...

fejjj

Eric,

I had to buy the stock 285lb springs from KW.

The springs you had on there were the 685lb ones that I replaced with the 285's.

So back to my question, how did you justify/rectify having the 685lb rear springs when KW says to go 200lb Max over the stock 285's?

thingo

I'd think if you have a set of 685lb springs they are to be used without the torsion bars. The suspension is much simpler to set up if you delete the torsion bars.

fejjj

Yeah I get that and that is the route I am leaning towards.

KW says that the max extra spring you can use is 200lbs over spec which in this case would be 485.

What does the effect have of adding a 685lb spring?

thingo

KW are including the torsion bar when they say the max over stock is 200. 685 is pretty close to 285+(equivalent spring rate of 25mm torsion bar) They actually mean that around 850 is the max spring for the damper.

fejjj

That doesn't make sense to me.

The valving in the shock is set up to work with certain spring rates.

PorscheG96

If it takes 5 seconds per side to adjust your KW rear shock compression settings and another couple minutes per side to adjust the lower spring perch upward to compress the tender springs a bit [and they are TENDER springs BTW, not helper springs - helper springs have rates in the single digits and NOT 50-100# like the KW tender springs], then why not just try these to see if you like the results before investing a weekend to re-index or remove torsion bars that will cause the ride to be more harsh like your previous Bilstein setup? Your goal is to reach the KW rear main 280# spring rate sooner in the travel for less 'squat'. The KW V3 is a very impressive kit that works great with existing torsion bars and has perfect comfort + cornering balance at the limit, as-is. If the car drives well after making the simple adjustments but you're concerned about ride height at the back of your car then you can potentially lower it back down using the spring plate eccentric, depending on where it's set now.

MAGK944

Got it, for some reason I thought my old KW's had round "tender" not a flat "helper" springs.

EDIT:
So I was correct in my recollection 😃


The valving is adjustable both in rebound and compression, so it should work with a wide ranges of spring rates.

zeusrotty

Give that man a beer. When I ordered the heavier springs they told me they would be fine for the valving. Otherwise I would not have ordered them from KW. KW doesn't do things in the valving that traditional coilovers do. So your traditional thinking may be skewed.