Living with my "dream car", the revolving door of Buick problems.

There is a moment from early in my life that I remember vividly.  It would end up setting a non-negotiable and tough as diamond goal for at least the next 25 years of my life.

I was probably about 4 or 5 years old visiting my mom and dad’s college friends’ house.  They had had kids about the same age as me and my sister, so we often played hide and seek to pass the time.  Being “it”, I started acting silly and opening doors I knew I was not supposed to go through yelling “Nope.  Nobody in here!”  One of those doors went to the attached garage, but what I saw behind that door just dumbfounded me for the couple seconds that I was being scolded by my dad to get back inside.  It was not dark, dirty, full of junk, or unnavigable like my garage at home.  I was almost blinded by fluorescent lights, and walls were asylum white with only racing memorabilia and trophies to break it up.  The stars of the scene, however, were two beautiful vehicles with mirror-like paint jobs.  One was a 1970 Saturn Yellow Buick GSX clone, and the other was a 1987 Buick Grand National.

Over the years I gravitated closer and closer to the Grand Nationals.  Yeah, the big block cars had neck snapping torque, lots of chrome, beautiful lines, and an equally impressive undog pedigree, but there was something mysterious about the Grand National.  It was a V6 car in a world full of V8s and still kicking everyone’s behinds at the track.  Black without any chrome trim and sporty upholstery was the only way you could get one despite being an upgrade for of all things, the Buick Regal.  These relatively minor styling details turned a true grandma car into something that looked rather intimidating.

In 2016 I sold my project car, bought a junky El Camino, flipped it for some more quick money, and irresponsibly took out a loan to get my dream car.  I could not wait any longer.

After a couple months of shopping, I ended up with this 43k mile mostly original 1986 model.  It looked almost perfect besides a few questionable modifications and an intermittent brake light, but it was mine.  I got my dream car.

I wish I could say that this was where the fairytale begins.  Any experienced turbo Buick owner reading this is already chuckling though.  I soon learned that these cars are like a curse.  They are outdated.  Yet, they are ahead of their time.  Everything likes to break, everything is expensive, and nothing comes easy.  As junkyard digs said in his Grand National series, this car is the definition of “Don’t meet you heroes."

I'll add more to this as I find time.  I've been pretty busy lately.

My uncle bought one and it was his dream car.  My Aunt complains about the money and my Uncle complains about unobtainable parts.  

He was going to have me over this summer when he got it out of the shop and I'd go over to visit and hang in the garage (he's kinda sick too). 

Hopefully it's not still in the shop.....

I've had a bunch, and yeah, they can be annoying, but when they're running right!  Nothing like that smooth roll in of boost and the noise.  I also remember changing head gaskets at the track, and transmissions at the hotel at the Nats...   :-D

I had a very long follow-up post prepared only for the site to freeze up.  I'll have to rewrite it later.

I once bought a 91 Corvette ZR-1, one of my dream cars.  I've always wanted a GN too.  I will watch this thread intently.

More please...

I did a lot of driving that first summer with the new car (2016), but there was one pretty major issue that I didn't want to mess with.  If you have sharp eyes, you'll notice that I already have the fix pictured in the first post.

My brakes were becoming less and less consistent and I was getting intermittent brake light illumination.  Not knowing how the Powermaster worked, I decided to throw a bowl (accumulator) at it and bleed the Coca-cola out of the system.  That was what everyone told me to do.  Well that didn't fix it, so I bought a book about the system and did real diagnosis.  To make a long story short, I rebuilt the master cylinder, lapped the check valve, and ultimately made a special tool that would let me know once and for all what was wrong.  My pump ran non-stop, and the pressure gauge I rigged up would only read about 600psi.  My pump was trashed, and I did not figure this out until two nights before my trip to my first GS Nationals as a Buick owner.  At that point, I figured it just wasn't meant to be.

For those who are unaware of the Buick Powermaster system, I’m going to try my best to quickly explain it.  It is an electric over hydraulic power brake assist.  The fluid reservoir is internally split.  One side is used to act on the calipers/drums like normal, and the other side is for the power assist system.  Both use normal DOT 3 brake fluid.  Under the master cylinder is an electric pump which draws fluid from the reservoir and pressurizes it through a check valve, into a nitrogen charged accumulator, and then onto a piston in the master cylinder.  A pressure switch tells the motor to turn on and off, so the only thing you need to make this system come to life is 12V and ground.  If you are familiar with the Teves system, the Powermaster is just an earlier and simpler version of that.

Here's mine with a custom bench test harness I made.

Anyway, this failed.   As you can probably imagine.  Walking into O'Reilly and grabbing a new one or parts off the shelf isn't going to happen.  I was drinking my coffee on my last shift before Nats and feeling bummed, but not fully defeated yet.  While cruising Craigslist I found a junkyard with G-body Cutlass and El Caminos ready to be stripped.  I messaged my boss to tell him that I was taking a half day and started planning my vacuum brake conversion!  I was able to gather the booster, pedal, and a new master cylinder before dinner time, do the conversion, bleed the brakes, and test drive before 1:00AM.  The car made it to the Nats after all!  In fact, the last picture you see in the first post was taken when I arrived at Beech Bend where I'm still rocking the plastic vacuum block.  I found a billet one made for vacuum conversions for sale in the pits, and installed it in the hotel parking lot.

My bad luck returned though.

The Powermaster trials helped me realize that this car sat untouched for a very long time, and time was not necessarily friendly.  The previous owner was not very mechanically inclined as would soon become apparent.  He didn't know that Powermaster brake fluid needed to be changed a lot more often if you treat a Powermaster equipped vehicle like anything else.  The alternative is pumping the brakes after every extended shut down to relieve the pressure in the system.   If you can't tell, I actually really like these systems.  The brake pedal feels similarly to a Hydroboost, it's standalone, and works without the engine running.  Converting to vacuum felt like a disservice to the car, and actually did some damage....

When I got home from the Nats, I had to change the master cylinder again.   After being so careful not to spill brake fluid throughout all this surgery, the brand new master cylinder was leaking all over the freshly painted booster, firewall, and frame.  I was no longer in a hurry to get the car on the road, but too broke to buy a remanufactured Powermaster.  I got a remanned master cylinder, cleaned up the car as best as I could, and called it done.  I felt like a terrible GN owner, but what was done was done.

I know this thread is all over the place, but the my attitude toward the car has changed countless times, so it's sometimes hard to recall my repair reasonings and timeline.  Like I said, the car sat for a long time.  I found proof of this in the huge stack of documents that came with the car.  The previous owner actually kept a copy of the original title.  The first owner bought the car in WI, drove it regularly, and sold it in 1989 with over 30k miles on the clock.  The second owner sold it to me in 2016, and I took this picture the following fall.  You do the math!

So I learned all kinds of things about "survivor" cars!

While driving to the Nats in my vacuum conversion victory trip, this happened.

While I knew that bumper filler disintegration was inevitable, I was not thrilled about my car looking this ratty for its first GS Nationals.  The previous owner actually had them repainted too.   Oh well.  I'm pretty sure I bought the fiberglass replacements less than a month later.

....my bad luck continues!

I decided to take the car on one more trip before I put it away for the winter.  I drove it to a GSCA meeting in Ft. Wayne, then made my way toward Chicago so that my old car buddies could finally see what I bought that summer.  A giant raccon tried to stop me.

I couldn't believe that I had just gotten involved in my worst ever wreck in my dream car which I had only purchased four months prior.  I was very lucky that more damage wasn't done and that I was able to keep driving after some creative zip-tying, but I was heartbroken and shaken nonetheless.  If I didn't already feel like a bad Buick owner, I certainly did now.

I used to work at a shop that specialized in these.  From stock repair to 8 second cars.  More the former than the latter of course  

I really like the Powermaster system.  At its core it is just a Hydroboost that uses brake fluid and has its own pump.  What usually happens is the accumulator (the bomb) fails so the motor has to run to supply pressure, which eventually burns out the motor.

That low point concluded the 2016 "fun car season" so I started the rebuild when I got back home to Indy.  I had a full bumper filler set, new fuel pump, hot wire kit, and air dam to install, and one of my work buddies welded and bent the Precision intercooler shroud back into a reasonable shape for me.

I found this cool old school ATR scoop to replace the damaged air dam.  I was disappointed with the fitment though.  I had to make a lot of relief cuts for it fit right, and precision intercooler needed a lot of help as well.

I made a new bracket for the intercooler.  It wasn't pretty but it was functional.

This car was equipped with what the Buick community calls the "rock catcher".  ATR made a CAI back in the day which was completely worthless for power because it required about 3 feet of 3" accordion tube after the MAF to install.  It scooped air from the same place as the intercooler, and sucked up all the road junk.  Mine tried to suck up the raccoon which mangled it pretty badly, so I replaced it with a cone filter.  Also note that the ugly yellow plug wires were replaced by a nice custom MSD set that I bought at the Nats.  Much less gaudy and a much better fit!

By the way, do you like that sweet mess of red wire?  Me neither.  That was the previous owners attempt at a DIY fuel pump hot wire.  I took care of that nonsense when I did the fuel pump.

I didn't trust the old ATR Super Pumper that was supposedly in there, so I dropped the tank and replaced the whole sending unit with a Racetronix 255.  The Racetronix sender is stainless and the tubes are mandrel bent without kinks.  The original senders have some built in restrictions so this was a nice upgrade.

After adding some shims and enlarging a couple holes, the Spool Fool bumper fillers fit really nicely!  I installed some headlight covers to support the sagging buckets too.  I think they look cool.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

I used to work at a shop that specialized in these.  From stock repair to 8 second cars.  More the former than the latter of course  

I really like the Powermaster system.  At its core it is just a Hydroboost that uses brake fluid and has its own pump.  What usually happens is the accumulator (the bomb) fails so the motor has to run to supply pressure, which eventually burns out the motor.

Nice!  What shop was that?

Yeah, I believe that's what happened to mine.

Keep in mind that all of this craziness with a car that was supposed to be ready to go happened within five months!

The bad luck didn't stop though.  I started noticing something was poking my rear when I sat in the driver seat.

When I saw this little bump in the original seat cover, I thought I was going to have a heart attack.  I wasted no time removing the seat and sending it to a reputable upholstery shop to get new foam becasue the bolster supports were broken and trying to break free.  The seat cover material is no longer made and these were still in amazing shape.  A hole would be a disaster.

I hadn't noticed how messed up it was until I pulled it out of the car.

The shop sure did a great job!  The seat feels much more comfortable than any other G-body I've sat in.  Best of all, you can't tell that anything was ever trying to poke through the cover!

While the seat was gone I tried to clean up the disaster under the dash that controls the alky injection system.  I pretty much came to the conclusion that it's a lost cause.  There is no nice way to install or wire this stuff without taking more apart than the job is worth.  I hid as much of it as I could into the slpit loom and tried to pretend like I hadn't seen anything.  The system worked fine afterall.

At the time, I liked the American Racing Centerlines.  The family friend who got me into Buicks had real Centerline smoothies on his car, so these were just feeding into my dream.  However, I've always hated center caps with the wheel brand on them.  It never looked right to me.

The car made it to the Nats again but with less drama.

It won its class at the work car show too!

Congrats on obtaining your dream car! It may give you some headaches, but think of them as opportunities to show your love. 

It's a sleek-looking ride, with a cool backstory.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Very neat cars, my friend used to have a couple of them. 

V6Buicks said:

For those who are unaware of the Buick Powermaster system, I’m going to try my best to quickly explain it.  It is an electric over hydraulic power brake assist.  The fluid reservoir is internally split.  One side is used to act on the calipers/drums like normal, and the other side is for the power assist system.  Both use normal DOT 3 brake fluid.  Under the master cylinder is an electric pump which draws fluid from the reservoir and pressurizes it through a check valve, into a nitrogen charged accumulator, and then onto a piston in the master cylinder.  A pressure switch tells the motor to turn on and off, so the only thing you need to make this system come to life is 12V and ground.  If you are familiar with the Teves system, the Powermaster is just an earlier and simpler version of that.

That's the most German-sounding thing I've ever heard of in an American car.

In reply to Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) :

An amazing number of underhood items have Bosch part numbers!

The car was finally put away for winter and stopped being a turd enough for me to make some updates.  One thing I always hated was the lack of regard for Scanmaster an Alky controller mounting.

The controller was okay other than looking bad and squeezing the dash pad.  I had to move that before the vinyl decided it was going to keep that shape permanently.  However, the velcrod Scanmaster was all kinds of awful.  I had to hold the back to press the buttons.  Otherwise, the whole thing would just flop around.  It was all around displeasing and tacky.

The fix is still one of my favorite modifications I’ve ever done.  I can’t take credit for the idea, but I’m still very proud of my execution and factory looking dash.

Scanmaster blown apart

and back cover slotted to accept a dissected G-body rear-view mirror.

Glued and reassembled

Not only is it mounted solid, but the display is in a nice line of view without disrupting the original Buick vibe.  I love how this turned out, and I've had a lot of people following me tell me that they like it too!

Part of the reason why I did this was because I bought a Powerlogger which required me to upgrade the chip in the Scanmaster.  For the non-Buick people, a Powerlogger is a circuit board that you add to the factory ECU which allows for data logging.  This was a very nerve wracking procedure for me because you have to take the ECU apart to install the board and cut the case a little.

It just hangs out the bottom like so when you're finished.

Then the plug sits inside one of the factory vents of the ECU cover.  It's super slick.  I've confirmed that everything works, but I've yet to use the Powerlogger.  The car has always had some kind of issue that prevents me from worrying about the tune.

In 2018 I went cruising with a local car club and one of the attendees got some good shots.

I also attended the Midwest Buick GS/GN show where somebody shot and posted another nice picture of my car.

I hosted a Buick club meeting at my house as well.

I still loved my car, but there was still a whole in my heart that my "dream car" wasn't fulfilling.  I started to realize that my expectations were very unrealistic.  I wanted a nice Grand National that would win shows, win races, and I didn't want to hurt the originality.  This is all pretty contradicting!  I also started to notice that the cost of and labor of modifying these cars right is a lot higher than the other junk I was used to playing with.  All this started to bum me out because my dream car would never be what I hoped it would be, and my lack of experience with modifying and repairing nicer vehicles was showing.  I also had way more money wrapped up in it than any other car I had owned previously.

Instead of continuing my wing it mentality or giving up, I decided to refocus for a while.  The GN was to remain in the fleet, but I wasn't going to keep throwing goofy appearance mods and trying to race it with all its issues.  Did I mention that I was doing that?  Yeah, I took it down the track once, and despite the bigger injectors, alky injection, and Precision intercooler, it ran slower than the advertised stock ET.  Yikes.

I needed to learn how to modify and repair cars properly, and I wasn't about to make the GN my guinea pig.  That was when my other project "LAME V6" entered the chat.  It was another RWD 3.8L car that was worthless in any condition, but cheaper to modify and impossible to "ruin".  If it blew up, I could get another long block for $200 and I wouldn't care about the numbers matching.  I made a deal to myself.  If I could successfully turbocharge the 3800 Camaro, make it enjoyable to drive, dress up the engine to my liking, and take it on a road trip all on my own without issues I could trust myself to start doing major work on the Buick.

This of course would be a long time coming, but having something else to tinker with meant leaving the Buick alone and enjoying it mostly as-is.  Here she is at the 2018 GS Nationals.

Before I bought my GN I tried to buy a 24k mile Rosewood T like this one, but I wasn't able to pay the guy fast enough.  I have no regrets buying a GN instead, but I still love the Rosewood cars.

Since I was focusing my energy on the Camaro, I took up my then girlfriend's grandpa's offer to store a car in his barn.  It was weird having a car I couldn't take out and drive whenever I wanted.

When spring of 2019 came I was excited to get the car back.  I had some nice new tools and a few parts that I thought would greatly improve the driving experience.  The AC had never worked in this thing, and I was pretty sure I knew why.  These compressors are notoriously bad, but I knew mine worked fine when the pressure switch was jumped.  The next most likely cause was a leak on the compressor.  Sure enough,

I replaced those orings with new green ones, but before slapping it all back together I flushed the system.

I replaced the accumulator with a powder coated Delco unit from Kirban's.  It looks like the factory piece, and that's the way I like it!  I also spent a long time looking for these conversion fittings.  It's not easy finding any with black caps, but I hate seeing the red and blue on an older car.  It just looks wrong.

After installing a fresh orifice tube, I drew a vacuum on the system for an hour, held it overnight, observed no rise in pressure, and filled it up with pure R12 and ester oil.

I was super happy with the results!  The car blew nice and cool all year.  Spoiler: it's still blowing cold today.  I wish I used a Ford orifice tube since that one supposedly makes it freeze you out like R12, but my simple conversion is plenty.  If I ever need to go in there again, I know what to do.  I'm just happy I did another successful repair/modification.

I wasn't out of the woods though.  It not the GS Nationals if I'm not scrambling to get a car finished, and I noticed a concerning squeaking from under the hood.  When I took the belt off and spun the alternator by hand it would squeak.  Figures!  I can't get one of those from a part store either unless I wanted to "upgrade" to an LT1 unit.  I personally like the death wheel fan that came on these from the factory, so a rebuild was going to have to happen.  I found an upgrade kit on ebay and dove in.

I painted the fan black because I couldn't seem to clean all the nasty junk off of it.  I'm stull unsure if I like it though.  While not original, black matches nice, and it never looks dirty.

The squeak went away, and my idle voltage raised from about 13 to 14.5!  Another successful repair/modification.

But I couldn't leave it at that.  I also noticed a concerning amount of junky non-stock bolts and stacked washers around the plenum.  I had to investigate.

Boy, was I glad I did.  This car has a taller plenum to match the huge throttle body and intercooler piping despite also having an all stock long block and turbo.  It spoke a bigger game than it could play, and the previous owner did not know how to install any of it.  Almost everything was loose which caused some major vacuum leaks, a lot of the wastegate control hoses were cracked, and there were studs made of chopped all-thread.  This needed a makeover.

The throttle cable mount bolt broke for some reason.  Nice.

This worked with the addition of some heat and a light pass with the tap.

Since I was this far and never changed plugs I figured they were worth looking at.

I'd say they absolutely WERE worth looking at!  The gaps were all over the place, the heat range was too low, and... well, look at them!  It's no wonder why this thing wouldn't run right now!

The bad news was that the new plenum bolts I bought did not allow me to install the plenum tighter.  The intake manifold was stripped out in multiple holes.

The car ran a lot better than before though!  It was just in time for the 2019 GS Nationals too.

That concluded the 2019 season, and the car went to storage working much better than it emerged.  I felt pretty good about that.

The next year was a little weird for the car, but of course it was.  2020 was weird for everyone.  The GS Nationals were supposed to be moved to may for its 40th anniversary and the GSX's 50th birthday celebration.  However, the even was postponed.  Since it had nowhere to be, I was very focused on Camaro upgrades, and we had another old car in the family to fix, the GN stayed in storage until May.

I drove it around a little here and there, but nothing was going on due to quarantine rules. 

If you haven't noticed yet, the headlight covers were long gone by this point.  They did a good job straightening my banana shaped buckets, but that was it.  They were a huge paint to keep clean.  I had to pop them out and wipe the back sides every time I washed the car wish was a pain.  Eventually one cracked, and I just threw them away.  I just need new headlight buckets.

Then it just went back to storage without much if any change.

The lack of change in the Buick and the exciting progression of the Camaro was starting to make the Buick feel like a waste.  I didn't drive it much, and when I did it was never running exactly right.  Therefore, I wasn't enjoying either.  I had no clear vision for the Buick's future, and the recently dyno tuned Camaro was running circles around it.   I knew that something had to happen in 2021.

I came up with a game plan and was excited about having the car back in early April 2021.

Kinda unrelated but kinda not.  The mountains of documentation included the original window sticker.  It was getting brittle and a folder where nobody would ever see it didn't seem like the proper place for it anymore.

One last look before I change things up.

This Precision intercooler is about the best stock location intercooler you can buy, but I've determined that it's completely unnecessary for my car.  It's extremely heavy, very difficult to work around, and very unfun to R&R.

I made this CAI mainly for looks.  However, it only hinders performance, it's also very difficult to R&R, and I don't even like the way it looks.  Gone.

The car came with all the original parts, so I was prepared.  I promise you will never see another Precision intercooled, accufab throttled, GN with a stock air box!

That was just for silly pictures though.  I kept working.  It was so nice to get rid of that crappy MAF mount and regain a flexible MAF pipe.  Everything fits nicely and R&Rs much easier.

It looks like it's time for valve cover gaskets.

Heater pipe is stuck.

These intakes are like hardware store black holes.  I found all this behind the runners. lol  The PO loved washers.

Still stuck even when squeezing two wrenches.

I'm (reluctantly) not asking.

Luckily Highway Stars had new heater pipes in stock.

Peeling off original heater hoses.

Yucky

All clean!

Still messing with this.  At least I was able to use a socket at this point.

Whoever was here before me is to blame.  It took silverback gorilla strength to get this junk apart.  Sure, I could have gotten a new fitting at a hardware store, but I'm too stubborn to accept this sort of defeat.  I'm happy to say that I don't actually have baby muscles, and the fittings were held together with some kind of sealant or RTV.  I shouldn't have been surprised since the Alky system was assembled the same way.  PSA: AN fittings do not require sealant!  No, it doesn't help either.  It just makes them a pain to service.

I worked too hard for this fitting to replace it, so...

Nice.

I'd say the molded hose to the waste gate is done.  That explains a lot.

Yep, buh bye Precision SLIC.  I sold the kit for $550.  Maybe somebody with a racecar will get some use out of it.

Old vs. new.  Big difference, but which one one is which?!  Seems backwards, right?

I wanted to fix the stock shroud a bit before throwing it on.

Plastic weld time.  I always push some metal into a crack for reinforcement when I do this.  In this case, I used old hog rings.  Sometimes I'll use a metal mesh.

I can live with this!

Last but not least, the Precision plenum and Accufab throttle were replaced with stockers.  Here's another picture of the downgrade.  The stock stuff WITH the vacuum block is shorter than the Precision/Accufab without a vacuum block so I should no longer be rubbing my battered hood pad.

Shiny new heater pipe is here!

I made my alky nozzle a little less obvious in the new up pipe.  I wanted to convert to straight 93 or E85 but I was indecisive and running out of fun money anyway.

I failed to mention that I replaced the stainless braided AN alky hoses with nylon tubing and compression fittings a few years ago.  I absolutely despised the shiny hose and that it chaffed my AC lines.  I think the black plastic looks a lot more fitting and inconspicuous.

The final product.

Those changes made me fall in love with the car all over again.  Despite the poor flow of the air box, this round of updates made the car run even better!  The new valve cover gaskets also helped with the oil smell.

What I could not live with was the lack of turbo sounds.  The air box made the intake too quiet, so I removed the bottom half of box and made my own platform out of a center cap from my old Thunderbird (RIP).

Unless you're really looking for it, you can't tell.  This performs and sounds much better!

I was in an odd predicament.  My Camaro needed tires, but I refused to buy a second set of tires for my beater project before the GN got it's first set.  The fake Centerlines were very light, but the fitment was terrible.  They needed to be staggered, but they weren't.  No tire would ever redeem that, so I drug these bad boys out of the basement.

...and my love for the car grew once again.  Suddenly, I hated those Centerlines and didn't know why I hadn't done this sooner. 

Now my wife loves the car as much as I do.

I didn't end up missing the fake Centerlines one bit.  I sold them and I still have no regrets.

Mid 90s, I am riding my purple and yellow 1995 Honda CBR 600 F3 on a 55 mph road at around 2am. Long day at school and looking fwd to getting home. One of these pulls up next to me and starts egging me ... I drop probably 4 gears and get ready to go ... we go and I pull a bike maybe two ... all of a sudden I hear a like a giant vacuum cleaner is about to suck me in and the guy is passing me like if I was at a stand still.

Pull up to the next light we had a nice chat and off I went thinking I had to research wtf was a Grand National, no internet those days at home. Had to wait until the next day at school. 

Probably what got me into liter bikes :)

More and more people returning them to stock(ish), as they've gotten more valuable.  I was the guy hacking them up in the 90s.  :-D

Here's an album of my last (and by far worst to start with):

PimpGN album

In reply to Kendall Frederick :

Nice!!  I love a good resurrection.  The Camaro has definitely fulfilled my desire for hackery, but this car still has some good stories to tell too.  I still haven't gotten to the good part. lol  It will stay relatively stock until I blow it up spectacularly though.