8 inch floppy head pad adjustment

[Chris Zach]

Working on cleaning up my RX02 drives: I've taken the 8 inch floppy 
units out of the case/chassis and have been cleaning dust and such off 
the whole assemblies.

One thing I noticed: There is a pad opposite the head that comes down 
when a solenoid is energized to provide pressure against the read head. 
Makes sense, it also has a pad that presses against the floppy disc 
itself, probably to keep it from jittering. However I noticed on both 
heads that the bracket is adjusted all the way down. This means that 
even when the solenoid is not energized the head pad is pressing against 
the disk and pushing the disk against the head.

Is this normal? I would think this would result in the floppy always 
being pressed against the head and quickly wearing out the disk. The 
whole point is to let the disk float against the head, only letting the 
pad push things into contact when doing a read.

Do I have this right, and is adjusting that that assembly proper when 
the pad puck is not touching the disk when up, but is touching it when down?

C