I have a 50 Merc with an 84 Buick sub frame very amateurishly welded in. Not having a lot of experience yet in Mercs I want to try to see from pics of other clips where they mount up to the stock frame. I realize they may be different with each type of clip, but I mainly want to see if I have enough stock frame left to replace this clip with more popular one or If I'm stuck redoing the one I have. So far from all my reading on here I'm leaning towards another clip altogether. I just want to see If i have enough frame left. Heres a pic of mine now:
Tim, I have not seen or heard of a better clip for the Mercury than a rear steer 67-69 Camaro , 70-74 Apollo , Nova , Omega , and Ventura ! You can still use it with what you have remaining of the Mercury frame ! Good Luck, Sonny
Thank you Sonny, That took care of another question i was gonna ask about which clips were the best/most used. I appreciate it! Also, do the 70-74 year range apply to the Nova, Omega, and ventura as well?
I don't believe 67-69 Camaro's and their cousin the Firebird are considered front steer. They have the steering box behind the k-member. The 70 -73 camaro's are front steer.
Tim, I had a senior moment ! Rear steer gives the least amount of problems ! 70-74 applies to all GM models listed ! Good Luck, Sonny
Here are a few of the 68-72 Nova clip in mine. I didn't build it, but the build pics came with the car when I got it. A few things I would do different with it had I done it (and intend to fix one day) is to put the Merc front frame horns back on so the bumper would mount with the original brackets. Also, the radiator support is mounted to the front lip of the front crossmember. I don't like it just bolted to that skinny little lip with spacers to the right height. I would have fabbed up a nice bracket or modified the original Merc bracket to fit. The only other goofy detail with an early Nova/Camaro clip is that the steering column now goes right through the space in the floor between the factory column hole cover and the factory master cylinder floor access cover. The builder of mine did some goofy sheet metal fill that was neither functional, nor "pretty." I have since cut the whole area out and reworked factory access covers and put in a decent floor mount for the column. Now it is functional as well as looks "right." The car rides and drives great and I think the rear steer Nova clip is a great fit for the car. No complaints from me.
The Jalopy Journal
