Volare Fail

A little history...

I bought this truck in 1996 as a basket case. Robert, the proprietor of the junkyard promised me that the Volare clip was done right. He also told me that he would provide an engine for me. All for a thousand bucks. Sounded pretty good.

The truck sat on the Farm for a few years, then in my backyard for 11 years.
In 2011 I moved it to the garage and started working on it.

I began working on rebuilding the volare clip because the rubber was rotted and the A-arms were rusted.

I noticed that the volare clip was welded in differently than I had seen before...

Two weld lines are visible because a strip was welded in to fill the gap. (Click to enlarge)

Yeah, that photo above shows how the clip was welded in. I don't worry too much about the height, because I really don't want the truck stance lowered. I want a stock look.

But I worry about the rake angle. I'm not an expert on suspension, but it seems that the rake angle would be negative on this clip. Also, it makes me wonder if whoever welded this in, knew what they were doing because it's not what I have seen and I know the templates for doing this have the fram notched at the bottom and the clip fit into the frame rails like the photo below:

Correctly Notched frame with Volare installed (credit: Notes on a Volare Front Clip )

Now look at the Volare I have to deal with. Instead of notching the frame from the bottom, the top was notched to fit the A-arm. So if I redo this, I have to fix the notch in the top of the frame.

Maybe the way the volare was put in here will work, I don't know, but with the negative rake, there could be more handling problems than I want to deal with, specifically when a bump is hit, instead of pushing the a-arm up the force will not make the shock as active. I guess you get the same effect on leaf springs to some degree. They are on a 0 degree rake.

I might leave the volare as is and finish the truck. If it handles ok at the stance that I like, then I'll be ok. If not then I can redo the volare.

If you have any experience with either of these two clip installs, please comment. You might save me some time and gain some good karma.