Hey everybody thanks for stopping by today. My name is Jesse this is Bill.
We're hanging out in the QA1 R&D shop talking a little bit about Bill's beautiful g-body
Grand National. This is a 1987 Grand National. Last year of the Grand National and I was
fortunate enough to be a young kid when my dad bought this it was only about I think four years
old when my dad bought it. So it's just it's been in the family ever since. Grand National package
you were telling me a little bit about the specifics of that there were a couple different
kinds of you know generations of this car versions of this car and so the Grand National special
to you, Yeah so the Grand National technically was an appearance package on a on a t-type. So t-type
cars you could get in different colors they had chrome bumpers chrome trim things like that. And
then the Grand National was a was essentially an appearance package on top of that which
only came in black came with the two-tone black and gray interior. So you probably got some pretty
fond memories of this car what's what really made you fall in love with this car? I mean like what
was do you remember that day when you're like this one's going to be mine? Oh yeah. Well yeah because
I was I think I was about eight years old when he got it and I already at that point knew that Grand
Nationals were something special because before before he had bought it I remember you know he
would he would see one on the street and he you know he'd get this look in his eyes so like that
that translated to me like ooh that's a that's a special car. Right. And then yeah when he got
it I remember I was like I was so excited when he got a Grand national I was like "my dad got
a Grand National!" You know it was like I was so excited and proud of him you know. Excited
for just the things we would do and I vividly to his day remember the feeling of you know
being a little kid and when he would punch it the just the back of the seat you know like you know
this would have been early 90s and I was a little kid so I didn't really have any
any real perspective on what a fast car felt like. Sure. But I do vividly remember that like
you know having a hard time keeping my head off of the head rest that you know as a little kid.
So is it sitting about the same as it was when it was new or you talked about a bunch of suspension
you know it seems like you know kind of the the heartbeat of it it's the same but you've made
some performance gains on the suspension side. The way my dad had it he had some um you know
this would have been early 90s tech but just some some regular gas shocks in the all-around. Okay.
And that did well for what it was doing then. Sure. Now it's got it's got drop spindles it's got
our control arms it's got coil-overs all the way around front and rear sway bars. So it's got it's
got essentially like our whole catalog kind of thrown at it. Right so you said your old man was
into drag racing quite a bit but you know maybe you know you kind of like to do some other stuff
with the car so you know how do you like to drive it? What I really like doing with it is I like
I like trying to use it as a regular car because I've had I've had other cars where I made it
really nice and then as soon as it was nice it was like I didn't want to use it as much anymore. Or
I only took it out for special occasions right and I really do like trying to use this as a
fairly normal car. You know I'm hoping to take it out of town this weekend. Oh nice. I like
just driving it to work on a random day you know things like that. But yeah the bumpers the bumpers
are stock. The Grand Nationals came with the black ones. T-types come with chrome bumpers typically.
So we've tried to maintain some of the you know the Grand Grand
National stuff appearance wise it's pretty stock. Stock turbo stock turbo heat shield
aftermarket air filter. Got an adjustable fuel pressure regulator. It's got the cam in it and
some head work. But stock intercooler and we redid the brakes so these cars had a
it's called power master brake setup and the whole idea was not to have a vacuum booster because
vacuum booster relies on engine vacuum to give you your power assist. Well the thought is when you've
got a turbo you you know you could have no brakes if you're if you go straight from in boost to
having to stab the brakes you could lose that. So we did keep the power master set up there's
an electric motor attached to a pump and that pump stores a pressure in this ball right here and that
added pressure is what gives you your power assist in the whole braking system. So rather than
a vacuum diaphragm that is pushing on a piston you've got a pressurized system that way.
You know at the end of the day we want to be able to enjoy these cars share them with other people.
So you know what do you like most about you know what cars do to bring us together? I'm
going to expand that slightly to just the motorhead community. Okay. Not the
sweet rock band I mean they're they're great too that's a great community in itself. But
no the motorhead community and I expand that because it can be boat guys a motorcycle community
car community they're all really tight-knit and and they all overlap. Right. You know so
like before here I was working with motorcycles a lot and you know those guys were motorcycle
guys were always ready to help at the drop of a hat and there's so much overlap between
like somebody who's into motorcycles is probably also into cars. So you know you go out to these
local cruise nights there's one about you know 30 40 minutes from here that I like going to
and I run into everybody. You know you run into you and and once you you start doing that
you're just walking down the street and you're like oh hey there's that guy oh yeah there's
alright. And so you've got this whole community and sometimes they're motorcycle people sometimes
they're hot rod people sometimes they're you know import car people and at the core of it
it's all just a bunch of people that that like these machines. Right. Whether they're two or
four wheels or you know boat propellers or something. And we all like understand
this common love and desire for it's not just the car it's what the car represents and what it
you know the memories it might evoke or the way it makes you feel when you ride in it or drive it.
Yep all right I think we talked about it enough. You want to drive it? Yeah let's drive it man.
It's got a built up tranny so it shifts pretty. I was gonna say that was pretty crisp shift there.
Roundabout no problem. Give her the beans!
Got a little giddy up!