Buick Grand National Dual-build, '85 and '87

[Chief Joseph]

Here's a project that I have been kicking around for years and years and I finally decided I better do it now or I may never get it done. I am building two Monogram 1/24 Buick GN kits at the same time; one will be an '85 model and the other an '87. So far I've done a lot of planning and not a lot of building, but here are the mock-up photos; the '85 up first:

The grille is made from photoetched brass and the tires are resin castings of my scratchbuilt Eagle GT. There are several differences between the kit (which is an '87) and a 1985 GN, so the "backgrade" requires a bit of work: different front chin spoiler, different wheels (I have some poor resin 1/24 scale Vectors from an Ebay vendor which I will attempt to make better), no intercooler, no 3rd brakelight (and the defroster lines are molded into the rear glass with the 3rd brakelight pattern!), and finally, the different grille. Since there is no intercooler on the pre-'86 GN, the whole turbocharger arrangement is different from the kit, but to save myself a lot of time and aggravation I'm just fastening the hood down and won't bother with detailing to top of the engine. Since this is a "hot-air" turbo (i.e. no intercooler), I've made up an appropriate vanity plate for it that reads "HOTMESS." The plate is photoetched brass with embossed letters. I'll print a decal to go over the top but I haven't decided on exactly what style of plate just yet:

The 1987 GN will be somewhat easier to build since the kit depicts an '87:

Same tires were used for both mock-ups. I've decided to make the job harder by adding LED's to represent the parking lights. That's a total of 8 red, 6 orange, and one white for the exterior lights. I'll also need to light up the instruments to be authentic.

Overall, the stance of the stock kit looks decent to me, but I'll do some slight trimming to drop them just a little bit. Probably the most disappointing flaw in the kit is mismatched wheel openings: the openings on the right side are about 1mm forward compared to the left side. That means the wheels are centered properly in the openings on the left, but appear too far to the rear on the right side. I can fix this problem by adjusting the suspension on the right, but I don't like screwing up one thing to fix another. Also, several of the parts were marred in the boxes by having the vinyl tires loose in the box. I hate vinyl tires . I have FIVE of these kits to pull parts from, so I should have plenty of spares. Over the years I would buy them whenever I found a good price. The molding quality on the original kits from the late '80's is much better than the kits from the '90's and later, too.

Thanks for looking. I'm not a fast builder, so don't be surprised if I don't show much progress

[bbowser]

Cool project. Take all the time you need, it is supposed to be a hobby after all

[dirtracer2448]

Hey Joseph, its good to see someone else building this kit. My build is depicting what i want my actual car to look like, but its a regal. Anyway, great job so far and i wont be needing all of my parts so if you need any just let me know.

[Casey]

I'd love to see more pics of the photoetched grille (and of the pieces, before it was assembled), Joseph, if you're willing to post them.

[Fat Brian]

One other thing you will notice when you put the glass in is that the drivers side quarter window frame is the wrong shape. It trails down toward the rear when it should be flat on the bottom. I didn't notcie it until after mine was painted and I couldn't fix it.

[brodie_83]

Sweet man, very sweet. I contemplated on building a hot-air '85 GN out of an '87 kit and redoing the turbo on top of the intake manifold and such as it were in '85, but I have a few other projects I'd like to do first. I also want to make a T-Type out of the '87 GN kit as well. I already have the Vector wheels for it. I'll be watching this build. Good luck!

[Chief Joseph]

One other thing you will notice when you put the glass in is that the drivers side quarter window frame is the wrong shape. It trails down toward the rear when it should be flat on the bottom. I didn't notcie it until after mine was painted and I couldn't fix it.

Thanks for calling my attention to this area, Brian. It's hard to see the details on all this black plastic! The two quarter windows are different sizes, too; the left side it just a tad shorter than the right. I'll fix the angled area by adding some Aves Apoxie Sculpt putty in there to bring it back level with the body lines.

Casey I didn't take any photos of the grille while I was assembling it. It was made by stacking individual plates of .010" brass together, alternating wide and short pieces to get the inset areas between each line. There are a total of 117 plates! Everything was held in alignment by two sections of 1/16' aluminum tubing; each plate had two 1/16" holes in it and they were all numbered, so the assembly was really easy. The finished piece is virtually solid brass and is very heavy. The final part that will go on the model will be a resin casting of this brass piece.

I had a 1981 Regal that was really sharp but had this anemic little Pontiac V8 in it. I have often thought about building a replica of it from the GN kit, but there are a LOT of small things that are different. I almost traded that '81 for a new white 1986 T-Type but my dad talked me out of it. I had a friend back then who had an '85 GN and when the Monogram model came out, I had the foresight to take a bunch of pictures (actual, get-them-developed-at-the-drugstore photographs!) of his car to use as reference for the model. Little did I know it would be almost 25 YEARS later that I would actually get around to needing those photos

[Fat Brian]

Yeah, the guy who did those quarter windows was either on his first or last day.

[Johnny1973]

The GNs are going to awesome when completed.I am going to following both builts so I do not miss the detail work you are going to put in.

[Chief Joseph]

Not much progress, but I did fix that annoying left quarter window with Aves epoxy putty. I'm not even going to mention some of the other things I've found that are a little off-kilter. I also worked out a method to create the gentle curve in the door glass:

The temporary door glass here is just tacked in place with white glue. When the real pieces go in much later in the build, I'll use clear epoxy to fix them in place with no gaps. Yeah, the windows will be rolled up on at least one of these cars, and probably both. Just a little pet peeve of mine that the US model companies automatically assume every car should have its windows rolled down!

[Chuck Most]

Wow! Did NOT know this kit was so wonked out! I'll know what to look for when I pick one up.

Fantasic job on the model-year 'downgrade' and corrections for accuracy so far (I admit I'd have likely never noticed the discrepancy with the quarter windows). Makes me want to pick one of these up and do something REALLY crazy... like build it as a standard Regal.

[Fat Brian]

You would have noticed it the same time I did. The glass is the correct shape, only the hole in the body is wrong. When the two finally meet, once all of the body and paint work is done and you can't really fix it.

[Chuck Most]

You would have noticed it the same time I did. The glass is the correct shape, only the hole in the body is wrong. When the two finally meet, once all of the body and paint work is done and you can't really fix it.

Yes, I probably should have amended "I'd have never noticed the discrepancy with the quarter windows" with "until I tried to fit the glass". Or "until it was too late".

[Danno]

Great project. Great job. I've always been surprised that more builders haven't done this kit ... myself included!

[roadhawg]

I've always been surprised that more builders haven't done this kit .......

I actually did built this kit last year, except I built it as a dirt track street stock race car, and with the front and rear covered in sheet metal, you can't really tell what kind of car it is............and it's not NEAR as nice as this one, lol.

[Chief Joseph]

I like to mock-up or dry-fit my models as much as possible before I start painting to avoid any unpleasant surprises later in the assembly. That's probably a bad thing, because I have started many projects only to put them away after finding too many things that need fixing! I think a lot of modelers avoid this Grand National kit because of the black paint. I have test-painted various bodies in black around 6 or 7 times in the past few months and I'm just now almost comfortable with the idea of painting the GN bodies.

[Chief Joseph]

I made up some photoetched brass parts to help fix some of the kit's shortcomings.

These are mainly parts for the top of the dash and alternate instrument clusters. The '85 will have the optional digital dash and the '87 will have the ASC dial gauges like a GNX, which was/is a popular upgrade to the standard GN. The kit instruments are a little wonky, and the steering column is not placed correctly in relation with the gauges. The gauge cluster from the Monogram GNX kit is a little better, but the dials are not laid out correctly. This is one of those things that I could have just ignored, but I like to obsess over little things I also put a bunch of replacement '87 grille emblems on this fret. I have already made the other replacement emblems on an earlier fret.

[brodie_83]

Incredible! How did you make photoetched pieces like that?

[Chief Joseph]

Incredible! How did you make photoetched pieces like that?

Patience and perseverance, my friend. There's a photoetching thread in the General section that has some of my information in it.

Speaking of photoetch, that's what I've spent a lot of time on the past week:

Here's bland dashboard top after I cut it up:

So that a new photoetched top with defroster vent and speaker grille details can be installed flush to the top:

The kit's dash instruments are okay but sort of weird; the AC control represents the fancy automatic version that very few GN's had. The gauge cluster is the standard type. Here is the dash for the '87 with a GNX-style gauge cluster and standard AC controls:

The '85 car will have the optional digital gauge cluster:

I am adding seatbelts, too, and the front seats need the seatbelt guides on the headrests:

Once I get all the engineering worked out on the seatbelts, I'll start painting the interiors. The bodies will be painted with the Yost method; here is a photo of the last test body I painted, a NASCAR Lumina, and I think I have the hang of it now.

I'm kinda on the fence about putting the LED lights into the '87 car now; I'm itching to get moving faster on these cars and the LED work will slow me down quite a bit.

Thanks for looking,

Joseph

[brodie_83]

Wow, those photoetched parts look amazing! Great work man...now I REALLY can't wait to see the finished products!

[Johnny1973]

Nice job on the photoetched parts.when both GNs are done they are going to look great.

[Chief Joseph]

It's been too long since I updated this build! I have decided that one of the cars will be in a little vignette with a female figure, so I spent a few weeks tracking down a set of Preiser 1/24 Academy figures to build the girl with:

I'm in the process of setting the pose for the girl and she will actually be wearing some clothes in the final version.

[brodie_83]

Dude, what's up with these builds? I'm starting my '85 Hot Air GN hopefully today.

[crowe-t]

Joseph, Excellent work so far! I hope you get back to these soon.

Mike.

[Ben]

Wow!!!!! I'll be watching this one!! My favorite car is the GNX!!!! Looks like yours will be better than the GMP diecasts!!!