Hello everybody! Bill here
again at QA1. And today I'm going to give you a road map of how
to take your G-Body from boring old
grocery getter to apex predator.
(Music)
Alright well what we got here
is my 1987 Buick Grand National.
Also aptly known as the G-Body
chassis. Or
if you're from the circle track realm, a metric car.
Umm and I really
like these cars for a number of reasons. One
I was lucky enough to have a dad who purchased this in 1991
and then I get to be the caretaker
of it now.
But G-Bodies are really popular cars, they're really
coming up for a number of reasons. And probably the
biggest reason is they're just very accessible.
They had everything from Malibus, to El Caminos,
to uhh there's 4-door cars
there's Regals like this. Ya know you've got some of the special ones
like the Hurst Olds and the 442s, you got the Grand
Nationals and the Pontiac Aerocoupes. But most of them
most of them that aren't like the top
echelon kind of models of the G-Body realm
are very accessible cars. They were just normal cars with
boring old 305s in them or even worse like a
like a V6.
And uhh
they're just very accessible.
They've been used in circle track racing for
years and years, decades now. Uhh and
they're still like the basis of this chassis
is still widely used in a lot of circle track stuff. So
you have a lot of street performance parts you can get. If you
want to get really really wild you can start diving into what some of the circle track guys do
to improve their suspension geometry, things like that.
So there's just endless amounts of things that you can do to one of these cars
to make it do whatever you want it to. Whether it's drag race or
autocross or road race or
I don't know, Cannonball. Whatever you want it to do.
There are parts readily available to do it. So if
you're not like a big-time fabricator,
you can buy parts that bolt-on and transform it from
boring, soft, uhh
ya know grocery getter to
to what it can be. Whatever you want it to be.
Alright,
so step one if you want to to turn your G-Body
into something else is really figure
out where you're at.
Get underneath the car, look at the bushings, look at the
shocks, the springs. Figure out what's actually in there.
Whether you bought a completely stock
ya know untouched car or you bought something
that's been somebody's project for many years. Whatever it is
figure out where you're at.
And that's gonna help you figure out where to go from there. So
first things first look for any worn components, look
look for bushings that are all cracked and dry rotted.
Look for uhh look for any any evidence
that any suspension components have been hitting any other pieces.
I've seen where uhh like a center-link on
your steering can be bent and it can push it back into the crossmember.
Uhh I've seen where
worn bushings can make your uhh
trailing arms in the back hit the frame, things like that. So
just get under there and really take a look at
what you're working with. Look at the bushings, look at the
springs. If somebody cut the springs
that's a common thing, ya know somebody will chop the springs to lower the
car. Ya know you would probably want to get those outta there and
look at the shocks. Ya know do the old
shocks, are they all wet with fluid,
have they been blown out long ago. Are they drag racing shocks
on a car that you want to put on the street? That's something to look at. So
first things first is figure out where you're at with the
car and then next we will get into the
sweet upgrades.
First real good
bang for the buck upgrade and it was the first things I did with this
car was coil-overs front and rear. Umm the coil-overs
allow you to adjust the ride height up or down.
The front is generally, our kits are generally
stock ride height to minus 2 inches. Now that does vary
depending on what spring rate you purchase and things like that.
But, you can generally plan for about a 2 inch drop.
Uhh in the back
I've got a 200 pound spring
on our coil-over kit. Just our off the shelf bolt-in kit
coil-over kit. And both the front and rear stuff
Are completely bolt-in pieces. The
rear you got, you drill a couple holes other than that
it all bolts in place. And it gives you a
shock and spring package that you can
tune. You can tune the valving on the shocks with the adjustment knobs. And
you can tune the spring rate as well just by ya know simple spring rate
changes which are easy to make and
readily available in all kinds of different rates. So we offer
3 spring rates for our rear kit.
Umm
If what you're doing is outside of what
those springs are good for, you can get any number of
springs you want. In the front we've got 9 spring rates
available. So everything from super soft drag
racing spring to super stiff
road race spring. So
first step
get the car down a little bit if you want to lower it.
I like to lower it.
And new shocks and springs.
Great bang for the buck. Goes a long way.
So now you've got coil-overs
in, you've got the car dropped down or you've got your ride height set where you
want it. You got your shocks adjusted so that they're
ya know what you want them to do
you can start driving the car
a little harder. Ya know you can start throwing it into corners a little bit harder.
And what you're gonna start finding there is
the next point. The next to point to upgrade
my opinion, sway bars. What those sway bars
are gonna do for ya, is there gonna help keep
the car level. When you throw it into a corner the car wants to lean over
it's going to help keep it flat around the corner and keep
all four of your tires, your contact patches
in good shape. Because otherwise what happens is when your car leans way up
your alignment changes and you lose contact
patch. Especially on the inside you lose a lot of contact
patch. So with a sway bar
help keep the car a little bit more level during that
is going to help you and it's just going to make the car
feel a lot more confident. It's gonna make the car
turn quicker. It's going to make the car feel more
planted when you go into a corner. And in the middle of the corner
you're not gonna notice as much of the car. Especially if
you don't have big nice sway bars on there. Or sometimes no sway bars
you'll feel the car start to bounce on the springs because
it's trying its hardest to not lean but
physics are doing their thing and they're leaning the
car. So you get something that helps control that
weight transfer side to side and the car is going to feel a lot more stable
and a lot more confident through the corner.
Alright so you've got your coil-overs in
you've got your ride height adjusted
you've got your shocks adjusted
you've got your sway bars on
you're loving life, you're hitting corners with confidence.
Next up
the control arms. Now what you may be noticing
now that you've really tightened up the handling of the car. You might notice
man the steering just feels so doggone light
and vague.
And that's exactly the way it was designed to be.
It was designed to have really easy steering.
Way back when they called it "one finger steering". Where you theoretically could
steer the car with your power steering with one finger. Which is
which is awesome if you don't want to put any effort into
anything. But when you're driving a car
uhh spirited or doing anything with it that's
more along our modern ways of of looking
at things. You want feedback through the steering
wheel. And one of the
greatest ways to get that is through adding
caster to your alignment basically.
And that's what these arms are
designed to do. They are designed to get you
4 to 5 more degrees of caster than what was
originally there. By doing that or
in doing that, we've moved the upper ball joint backward and the
lower ball joint forward. So it keeps the wheel
in the same place, it doesn't pull the wheel backwards.
But it gives you that added caster. So what's that gonna do is ya know
cruising down the highway the car is gonna track real nice and
straight. When you go into a corner you're going to feel a little bit more
resistance. Just because that's
you're gonna feel the road more.
Really big difference. The other great thing
is that you're gonna get rid of the 30-40-year-old
crappy rubber worn out bushings that have probably never
been touched. Because most people never did.
And you're gonna get really nice new polyurethane
or igus bushings.
Which are very very low deflection
and low friction. And everything just moves super
easy. So it just, the control arms
let your suspension move easier so that your shocks and
springs can do more of the job of controlling the weight
and the motion of the car. The last piece of  moving
parts that you would want to address in your G-Body
would be the rear trailing arms. And there's different options for the
upper trailing arms. There's just a one-piece welded
bar that's the same length as stock.
We've also got an adjustable trailing arm
which allows you to adjust your pinion
angle after you've changed the ride height of the vehicle. And you can check out
our other videos. We've got another video that really details those. But
really what the trailing arms are gonna do for ya is there going to
they're gonna get you more traction. The trailing arms are a
boxed section. Which means that they're totally boxed in on
all sides rather than stock ones which are
a stamped, kind of a c-channel.
They're not, they don't twist and flex nearly as much.
They've also got brand new polyurethane bushings
in them that are very deflection and things like
that. So what that means is when you go to get out of the hole
if you're drag racing, or even just ya know
hammer on it from a stop
All of that power is going to be going into
your tires and into the ground rather than
into flexing your suspension stuff and your bushings
before it gets to your tires. So you're gonna feel more
direct connection
your right foot down to the ground. And you're
just gonna get more traction. Which is great for getting out of the hole,
but if you're just looking to do burnouts
you're gonna wanna do a little bit, you're gonna wanna lean into that gas pedal just a little bit
more. So now that all of your moving parts of the suspension have been
addressed. The coil-overs,
the sway bars, the control arms,
the trailing arms. The last piece would be to start
stiffening up the chassis. These cars
were not known to be real stiff chassis. Some of
them like these Grand Nationals, they didn't even come with
all the body bushings in them. They wanted them to flex because
flexible makes for comfortable. Well when you want like a
performance-oriented car, you want it
to be more tight, more rigid. So we've got a
adjustable frame braces as well as a non-adjustable frame
brace. Which links together your trailing arm
mounts on the chassis side in the back. So
it bolts together, no cutting, no welding,
nothing like that. Just bolts onto the existing trailing arm mounts
and it braces those together. So if you are drag racing
or if you know you're just, high-performance
streetcar stuff, you're gonna get less flex in the chassis
at that point.
Well there you have it. There's your road map!
If you're thinking about where to start or what to do on your G-
Body to get it to handle and perform the
you want it to, there ya go. Some things to think about.
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