I have a 51 merc montery. i am at the very beginning of the rebuild i have the body off and sandblasted frame and painted so i am ready to start building so i will have alot of question cause this is my first build. soooo. a guy said i could use 90 areostar coils that sounds good but does anyone know what spindles are direct bolt on for the stock a arms. any help would be great. i havnt learned how to find things on this site yet. Thanks guys scott
I am probably mistaken but I think that the Merc has a king pin suspension and has uprights instead of spindles. IE no ball joints. I think you can get dropped uprights for it from fatman's or the like. if it is disc brakes that you are after (beyond me why) I am sure that someone makes a kit to adapt discs to it.
Areostar coils work well on shoebox Fords, but the Merc is heavier. It might work, might not. Also the Merc uses a king-pin front end, so there are no oem bolt on later spindles for discs etc. There are some aftermarket suppliers for that type of thing.
P-n-B would be correct on that one. No direct bolt on disk brake spindle but you can get the dropped uprights from several sources and one of our own may do a disk brake setup for those and he usually perks up when there is a Merc thread on here.
If you are going springs and dropped uprights you may as well just reverse the uprights. That is good for about 3-4" as I recall a ton on an old merc.
thanks for all the replys. I knew the merc had kingpins but i guess i didnt understand the differance in spindles and kingpins. so is a upright a kingpin? I called jamco and they have uprights. P n B you said reverse the uprights. Do you mean do that instead of getting coils? also why is a kingpin set up so bad? a few guys say I need to get ride of it, I am not sure why. I know I do want disk brakes but short of that I don't know. I know I would like to keep as much of the parts to reuse them since I am kinda on a budget build but I also want it to be a daily driver
We put '79 Ford pickup rear brakes on the front of a '49 Merc. Just have to heat and beat flat the bump for the e-brake cable. Go for the dropped uprights. Flipping the stockers gives you some weird steering geometry problems.
since this is my first car I am rebuilding how hard is it really to use the old brake system and how hard to get pads and rebuild parts
Not hard to get at all. There are many vendors that supply brake and suspension parts. Your local parts supplier should be able to get them for you.
If set up right, the stock brakes can work great. If you're going with big horsepower or something you might consider disc brakes. if not, rebuild yours and they'll work fine. There's nothing wrong with the uprights. It's Ford/Merc's first independent front suspension and the geometry just won't allow you to go SUPER low. Jamco sells dropped uprights. They might sell springs too.
Jamco "sells" dropped uprights, they just don't ship them. Please do a search here before you order. There are multiple threads about this company and their lack of shipping or communication. They even lost their Alliance certification. If you have that kind of patience or money, please send it to me-I won't ship your parts,either. Forewarned is Forearmed.
I hadn't heard of this. After I thought about it, I didn't buy the Jamco ones, I bought the ones from Fatman. Their customer service was amazing and I got the parts in less than a week. Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad