When do you need to replace valve springs?

[Dirtss70]

How often do the valve springs need to be replaced? Our car is raced every week on a 1/4 mile paved oval. It is a 2300 mustang fox body with an Esslinger hyd cam. The motor turns 7200 rpms.

[RACEMAN]

Before one breaks and drops a valve.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I think your answers will be all over the place. How long is your season? How many laps are your races? How many RPMs do you turn.

Up here our season is about 20 nights long. Run 75-100 laps a night. I know guys have gone all season without changing. But they probably needed it by the end. Some of our guys have changed at least once per season after the start.

Get your builders recommendations if you didn't build the engine yourself.

[Foghorn]

There is so many variables, starting with quality of the springs, as mentioned the rpm, the amount of laps etc etc. Left in too long they start to go "Soft" with a loss in performance and the chance of failure increases as time goes on. If you have the budget then change them during the season or at least have the pressures tested. There are many brands of springs, some of them bagging out after a few nights. A broken spring and a dropped valve can be very costly. There are some inexpensive valve spring testers on the market. Test your springs as often as you can to remove all doubt. Good luck!

[little302]

As 22 dodge would say. Use the Mopar 2.2 spring and run it for 5 years!!

[Browndog]

That's not a good suggestion.

[drtlvr]

I'm interested