(scraping) (laughter) - Just keep going! $300 eBay coilovers. - Versus $2,500 fully
adjustable coilovers. - Does more expensive mean more better? - Let's find out. Let's find out! - Yeah! (upbeat music and car sounds) - Try and match my energy, Nolan. Try and match my energy. - We bought two,
almost-identical Nissan 350Zs. - As identical as we could find. - And we're going to modify
them to be fun, daily drivers that you can take to the track. - One Z gets expensive parts. And one Z, gets cheap parts. - Then we're going to test
them, and see which components are actually worth spending
your hard-earned money on. - I'm the boss, so I
get the expensive parts. And I went right to kwsuspension.com
and spent 2,500 bucks on a set of fully adjustable KW V3s. Some of the best coilovers on the market. - And I went onto eBay
and spent $300 on these, which were listed as Coilovers
Struts for Nissan Fairlady Z, 350Z, Z33, 2003-2008, shock absorbers, green. - I've heard about those. They're supposed to be very good. - Gotta get the green ones. (drumming) - It comes with a toolkit. This is the front coilover. As you can see it's got this
external reservoir here. That keeps the rebound more consistent, it also gives me a little
bit more consistency in the temperature of the fluid. - Right away, you can see
the welds in the top here are just dimes, dude. - Yes, the materials used are nicer, the machining is nicer, but what you're really paying for is the amount of research and development. These shocks are valved
specifically for the 350Z. The spring rates are designed
to work with the valving in the shocks on the 350Z. The only con that I can
see is they're $2,500, which costs more than a lot
of cars that I've owned. (laughter) - It's already got a hole in it. - There's a hole in it. I think a rat lives in there. - All right. - [James] Oh! - That's not as well-sorted as yours. (plastic crinkling) Um, James, if you want to bring your expensive KW, eBay. (laughter) (drumming) James has progressive rate. You can see these coils are
a little more stretched out, and then get closer here. There's variability as the suspension goes through its travel. This is just all the same coil distance, and it's a lot shorter, as you can see. And then here's the rear strut. Oh my god! Oh my god. There's like a tiny bump stop. This little guy right here, that's all that's stopping
the car from bottoming out. Next to James's, yours
is three times bigger. - The welds on the ZWs are a lot better. - Oh my god! (laughter) - I could have done this weld! - That is not good, dude. This is gonna break. But I mean, that's what we were
expecting when we spent $300 on these. We won't really know what
the weaknesses are until we put them on, and test the cars out. - I hope you survive. - Me too. - [James] Installing
coilovers isn't difficult, and in our opinion, it's
one of the first mods that anyone should do
to their project car. It's a low-effort, high-impact
way to quickly change both the performance and
the looks of your car in an afternoon, making it the perfect
project for any home mechanic with a little knowledge and basic tools. - Swapping out your coilovers
is not super difficult. - These are the tools you're gonna need. These are all things that you can find in the garage at home. You don't necessarily need
power tools or anything. - Really, at its core,
all you gotta do is unbolt the bottom of the coilover
from the control arm, and top of the coilover
from the strut tower. There's usually some
other stuff in the way, like we gotta remove this strut brace, brake lines, stuff like that, but really, it's about five bolts. - [James] Now the point of this video is to find out the difference
between two sets of coilovers, but I'm also a really competitive person, and I want to destroy the other team. - I want to see KW do this, huh? - I think both my production
team and my mechanical team is more impressive than those guys. - When you're taking a
coilover off, you want to leave the nuts sitting, because you
don't want it to fall down. (bleep) - There we go. - One down. - Need some milk! Rest in peace. - Now that we've got our
OEM strut out, we can preset our ride height, comparing
it to the old one. We want to get about an inch lower. - [James] The main benefit
of most coilover kits is that they offer the ability to adjust several different aspects of suspension. One of which being ride height. This is done by spinning the threaded body up or down the shaft. - [Nolan] That's about an inch. - [James] For our KWs however,
the ride height is linked to the preload adjustment. - KW, their whole mantra is to
make the best thing the best, and they know better than us
how to make a good coilover, to be fair. So they basically give
you preload adjustability, and then your ride height
is what they determine. - Preload is pretty
much the amount of force that's on the spring before
it's actually load bearing. - Shaky, tighten it up, not shaky. - So that's our zero point. I put a piece of tape
on the threaded body, then we'll screw up this bottom
collar, and as it moves away from the tape, we'll measure
the gap in between the tape and the collar. By my eye, that's five millimeters. - We took all the preload
out of the coilover, but we don't want this to rattle
around when we're driving, it's gonna be really annoying, and it's just not gonna feel good. So what Aaron's gonna do, he's gonna put about an eighth an inch of preload on it so it stays in place, but gives us a nice comfortable middle ground. - A shock absorber's main purpose is to dampen bumps and
vibrations as you drive. "Compression Damping" is what's happening when the suspension is traveling upward. "Rebound Damping" is what's
happening when the suspension is traveling back downward. - This speed right here,
where it's releasing, on James's coilovers, he'll
be able to adjust that speed. We will not be able to do that with this. - [James] Nolan's eBay
green coilovers don't allow any damping adjustability
at all, while our KWs have adjustable compression and rebound. - KW gives us some tips,
some starting points, basically right in the middle,
which is to be expected. - If we want to, once we start
driving the car and stuff, we can go back in and fine
tune based on our liking. - I bet we're gonna like 'em. - (laughing) I bet we're gonna like 'em! - Let's get them in. (mechanical noises) - Here you go. (socket grinding) And unlike the front, the back
is just two separate units. So we have a strut here and a spring here. They're mounted in different locations. It's gonna be a little
different, but, ultimately, the back is usually faster. (socket grinding) - Hasta la springsta, bebe! - What we're going to
do is match both sides. A lot of these adjusters are in that cup, so you can't actually adjust
them once they're installed. With the KWs, they're at
the top, so we'll get 'em in the right ballpark,
we'll get them installed, but then we can tweak
them without much issue. (slow music and car sounds) - There we go. Look how much shorter this
one is than the factory. It's gonna take some
guesstimating, I think, on our part to get this right. It is, as you can see, a lot shorter. This thing is just gonna
be dumped to the ground. - Got our rubber perch,
to keep from rattling. - This doesn't fit in there. So it's gonna be a lot louder and harsher. - KW makes these cutouts, which
match the clips in the body of the the 350Z. - A gasket, which I assume
is from a garden hose. - So that will locate
the perch, which is nice. - But hey, 300 bucks. - This episode of HiLow is
brought to you by Mobil 1. As you probably know, your
engine oil is a crucial part of keeping your car happy and healthy. Mobil 1 Advanced synthetic
motor oils are designed to keep important vehicle engine parts in excellent condition for 250,000 miles. Compared to conventional
oils, Mobil 1 motor oils offer outstanding performance,
long-lasting protection, and extended engine life. Mobil 1 synthetic oils
are specially formulated by a dedicated team of
scientists and engineers. Up to 20,000 hours of
lab and field testing, and 500,000 miles of
road and track testing go into each bottle of Mobil 1 motor oil. Thanks again to Mobil 1
for sponsoring this episode of HiLow. Support the brands that support Donut. - [James] Unsurprisingly,
everything is going smoothly on Team Hi's side. All of our parts are fitting
perfectly, and we're about to button up and drive our
car for the first time. While Team Low is struggling
with their eBay model green coilovers and running
into snafu after snafu. - There's a fastener right here, a nut welded to the strut here, ours does not, so we need
to find a nut that fits. The key to our salvation
is in this plastic tray of random nuts and bolts. - Oh, that one looks nice. (ratcheting) - I think that just
because they're going fast, doesn't mean that it's better. I think they're rushing it. They're not gonna put the same
amount of thought and detail into the end product. - It's been a pretty easy
install, and we're gonna see what she looks like on the ground. Started with a quality product,
and hopefully our work is-- - We ended with a quality job. - Yeah. (slapping) - This is the way to do it. - Nah, you never want to
rush this kind of stuff. It's not race, Jesse, okay? - Did someone not tell
Nolan it was a race? - No, it's not a race. If you rush, things go wrong. And we're not rushing. - Damn, dude. - Did you get those 10 inches? - Woo! Oo! What is that, a race car? - Kismet? - Kismet, yeah. (clunking) Did we tighten everything? (clunking) Nope. - Nope, surely did not. - We forgot to tighten some
nuts on the top of the strut, we think. - What was that about
it being a race, again? - It was... - Huh. - Two bolts of top of the rear strut. Did them finger tight and
forgot to tighten them down. There's a lot of people
working on the car. - They left them loose. - And all of us thought
someone else did it. Okay, bolts tightened. - Ah, that sounds
- Yeah that's way better. - way more like it's supposed to. (clicking) (laughing) - For 300 bucks, if you
don't care about comfort, and you just want to look like a hot boy, green's what you need. (engine roaring) - Oo! - Oh yeah. - She's solid. - Yeah, it feels very solid. - I feel good. I feel ready for the maiden voyage. (engine roaring) (clanking) - That's our exhaust. - That's our exhaust? - Yeah.
(laughter) - We are going over all kinds
of bumps and it feels great. - [Zach] Like that? - [James] We just ran over a manhole. - Dude, hit this corner, man. - [Nolan] Let's see here. - Oh wow, that is terrible. (laughter) - Even the steering input is so smooth. Just pick a line and jump right on it. (engine roaring) - Oh, dude, that's better, right? - I don't think so. (laughing) - [Zach] I like it. - Dude, just eat it up. - Just over that bridge, no problem. That was a huge hump. - Very happy with our-- - Hey, - Ride around the block. - We did it. - Good job. - It's not too bad though, honestly. - Nah, it rides nice. I think the preload helped. - Yeah. (scraping) (laughter) - Just keep going. - It's just like every
car you've seen at Sonic. - From what I've heard Zach
and James say about their KWs, that's not at all what I felt in this car. Three, two, one, go. - [James] After both teams
got the coilovers on our cars, we set up a small slalom
course in a parking lot to get some smart boy scientist numbers. Now, why do we upgrade our suspension? So that our cars will handle better. And a slalom course is an easy way to test just how much better
our cars are handling. (laughter) - Two cones down! (laughter) What's the time? - [James] We wanted to
eliminate driver skill from the equation, so each of us drove both cars three times. (tires squealing) Also, tires play a huge role
in any sort of handling test, so both cars used literally
the same exact set of tires. - So after he's done testing
his car, we're gonna switch the wheels over to my car so the only variable is suspension. - [James] First we ran the Hi Car. - It just like planted. It's really good. - Then we all took turns
running the Low Car. Three, two, one, go! (tires squealing) - A good start. - See, look at that thing rails! - Yeah, dude!
(whistling) Max P, baby! - [James] And then we were super shocked, because it looked like Low
Car was actually faster, but then I realized that
we made one critical error. Turns out the first time we did the slalom in the silver car, the
traction control was on, which slowed us all down. So we're gonna see what happens
when we do it with it off. (tires squealing) Oh, oo. - Swirl it, go. (tires squealing) Tidy! (laughter) - It just like planted, feels great. Unlike when you're driving
my car in the street, you're like, "Oh, god!" When you watch the cars run
side by side you can see that the Low Car as a touch more body roll compared to the Hi Car. But the Low Car is literally
lower to the ground, so that helped it out a little bit. (laughing) Three cones! - [James] So we turned
the traction control off, everyone got a couple more runs in Hi Car, and the results were a lot
closer to what we expected. Fastest time of the day! - Yes! - The average times, the
Lo Car did 7.02 seconds. - Respectable. - Respectable. And the Hi Car did 7.06 seconds. - Negligible difference. - Very negligible difference. - I am surprised that they're so close, but they felt way different. - Totally different cars. The Lo Car, you really
had to drive that thing. - And I just want to point out
that Aaron smoked both of us in both cars, so in our very,
extremely scientific test, the coilovers really didn't
make as much difference as driver skill. So if you want to be faster,
the biggest thing you can do is practice and get faster,
and better at driving. So, Nolan, if you had to buy
one set of these coilovers, which one would you buy? - $2,500 is a lot of money. - Right. - It really depends on
what you want to do. If you want your car to be a beast in the handling department, then yeah, I think saving up the money
and dropping 2,500 bucks on the KWs is a really smart thing to do. - I was blown away by how
much nicer the KWs are than even, say, a 12 or $1,300 coilover. Mainly in the daily driving aspect, they were really super comfortable. It improved every aspect
of the ride, of the car. - But if you have no money, and you just want to slam your car, the $300 ones weren't that bad if that's what you want to do. If that's all you want, I would get 'em, but just know that is
gonna make your car worse, and gonna make the way you
drive totally different. - So does more expensive mean more better? - [Both] Yes! - Definitely. You don't have to go crazy like we did and get the top of the line KWs, there's a lot of stuff in the
middle that you can go with that would be great. But when it comes to coilovers,
more expensive does mean - [Both] more better. - Thanks for watching HiLow, guys. We're gonna do a complete
build on these cars. We're doing wheels, tires,
brakes, diff, interior, turbo, and then we're gonna end
it all with a huge road trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico,
where we're gonna test these cars on a real live race track. Be nice. - I love you! - See you next time. - Ha!
u/DonutNolan that is THE BEST NEWS!
Thanks for all the hard work you guys put in, can’t say this enough.
Finally!!!! My girlfriend always asked me why I spent so much time on Facebook! Fuck that bitch, go Donut, go Nolan!
It's hilarious. Will defenitly watch all of em
I already watched it. It is a very interesting and entertaining video with some valuable pieces of information. I am looking forward to see the next Hi Low episode.
Finally watched this today. The results were as expected, if not slightly better than.
The show itself was excellent and I can't wait to see more!
Your coilover video convinced me to save for KWs. I never realized really how much worse cheap coilovers were. Thanks Nolan <3
Hi low is my favorite segment of donut so far. It’s really good information and am sure it’s a blast doing.