grub installer fails during fresh ubuntu 18.04 install

[Tony B]

I am trying to install Ubuntu as the sole OS on my Surface Book. Before I had it dual booted and grub installed and ran just fine. Now that I select I want Ubuntu across the whole disk, the installer keeps crashing once it tries to run the grub-installer

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: ubiquity 18.04.14.6
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-29.31-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-29-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
Architecture: amd64
CasperVersion: 1.394
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Oct 29 20:38:50 2018
InstallCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper only-ubiquity quiet splash ---
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180725)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 LC_NUMERIC=C.UTF-8
SourcePackage: grub-installer
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)