- $4,000 prefabricated armor. - Versus $800 do it yourself armor. - Does more expensive mean more better? - Let's find out. Ow. (upbeat music) A huge thank you to eBay Motors for sponsoring today's video. You all know by now that
eBay Motors is the best place to buy or sell cars and parts online. It's where bought these Tacomas
and a ton of parts for them. One of the things we like
most about eBay Motors is that their automotive
marketplace has parts for any budget. Whether you've got a
high budget like James (upbeat hip hop music) or a low budget like me, (somber music) (farting) I can guarantee that you'll find the car or the part you need all
within your price range. Get started today by
downloading the eBay Motors app, or just click the link
in description below. Now let's get High and Low. (bright music) We bought two nearly
identical Toyota Tacomas, and we've been modifying
them to be fun daily drivers that you can take literally anywhere. - Except for the inside of a volcano. One Tacoma gets expensive
parts, and one gets cheap parts. - [Nolan] Then we test them
to see which components are worth spending your
hard earned dollars on. - Now, beefing up your
bumpers, adding skid plates and rock sliders not only
gives you more confidence to conquer more difficult
obstacles, but the extra clearance from the new front and rear bumpers can also improve your
approach and departure angles. Basically, it's how steep
an obstacle you can climb or descend without dragging
anything like your bumper. Hi Truck is getting an ARB front bumper, Coastal Offroad rear
bumper and skid plates, and 4x Innovations rock sliders, all together with a combined
cost of just over $4,000 for parts that we're gonna run into rocks. - Wow.
- Yeah. - Low Truck, on the other
hand, is getting a bunch of steel tubes and plates. (James chuckles) It'll be up to us to measure, cut, bend and weld all these
components onto our truck. All together, we spent
around $800 on supplies, and I am nervous. - But there's always a
chance that you are better than professional
engineers and fabricators with years and years
and years of experience in market research. - I'm ready to give it a whirl. (driving, prcussive music) - It's armor day, the only
day that we're welding, and wouldn't you know
it, Zach showed sick. But luckily, my friend
Brandon is helping me out. - Shoot, I've been doing this
since I was in high school. When I was 15, I bought a drift car, and trucks were a natural
kinda transition from that. - First thing's first, we're gonna take all the old
stuff off and then hopefully, start putting the new stuff back on. - [Brandon] Pull harder, harder. - [Nolan] Before we get
too deep into the install, it's important to understand the purpose of each component we're installing and the different challenges
each team might face. Custom front and rear bumpers
not only offer protection, but will affect your approach
and departure angles. These are the angles found
by drawing a line tangent to the outside of your
tire and the lowest section of your bumper. The more you lift and
tuck in your bumpers, the greater the angle becomes, allowing you to take on
bigger and steeper obstacles without making contact that
could damage your truck, the trail or both. - Dude, we're scratching the chrome, bro. - I might reuse this. - If we didn't use this OEM piece here, we'd just have a giant void
across the front of the car, and it would be like Pac-Man
with a bunch of exposed, disgusting looking stuff, which is why we gotta
keep this chrome nice and clean and unscratched. - [James] We're also
installing skid plates and rock sliders. While these components
offer great protection, mounting them too low could result in a compromised break over angle. This is just like your
approach or departure angle but for the center of your truck, determining which
obstacles you can roll over or which will leave you
stranded high center. While Hi team has the luxury of completely prefabricated
front bumper and rock sliders, our rear bumper and skid
plate came in a bunch of little pieces that we'll
have to weld together ourselves. Luckily, those pieces
were designed by a team of professionals and machine
cut with extreme precision to fit together perfectly, as long as we follow the
instructions correctly. On Low Team, they not only
have to fabricate and weld all of their upgrades, they
also have to come up with the design themselves, which can sometimes be the hardest part. - $1,150 for this bumper, and they're gonna have to build their own? - This is my design. I just took a picture of the truck and used markup on the iPhone. - We don't know how many
days it's gonna take them to build their own. - Yeah, how much is their
time worth by the hour? - [Nolan] I also made
one for the side too. - I'd pay the $1,000 for the ARB. (grinder rasping) (metal clanging) (drill blatting) - [Brandon] One more. - Ow. - You okay? - F-B-O-O, front bumper officially on, and it looks sick. You guys aren't listening. - Instead of having the separate
pieces, we'll have one bar. It's gonna be small and short from here, a quick bend all the way and
then down to this section, and then an additional bar. We're gonna weld that bar to this one so it'll layer like this. - [Nolan] I love it. Let's yeah, I think,
let's try it. Let's do it. - [Aaron] Cool. (grinder rasping) (funky music) (grinder rasping) (hammer banging) (weld zapping) - Dude, it looks awesome. - We cut our front skid plate piece. Now it fits a lot better
between our bumper tabs here. We'll move on to the next
piece that comes down and then work our way back. - This is a spinoff of high-low. It's called high-low master fab. (weld zapping) Tacked. (funky music) - So the way this kit's
made is the front diff and oil pan cover has no
support to the frame at all. So we have to hold that up
entirely with either jack stands or floor jacks. And once it's held up,
we're gonna shift it around, align it, and then we're
gonna weld it in place. Don't let it wiggle too much. (weld zapping) - God! (Nolan groans) While Aaron's working on
the front, I've come back to the back for the rear bumper. Here, I've got my shop hand,
Jimmy with me right now. I've got the stock brackets back on. I'm thinking we just drop some
rectangular tubing onto it, which will give us a little
bit more a departure angle. It's not gonna be the most
glamorous solution in the world. That is for sure. But, in the interest of time, I think this is the best we can do. - We're moving on to the top bar. We took a large piece of cardboard, CAD, cardboard aided design. - I just traced Hi Team's
OEM bumper on a piece of cardboard, did some measurements. I know we got a 6 1/2-inch
radius fender here, and that's the only di that we have, so I've made everything
based off of that diameter. - Hey, thank you, Zach,
for doing the math. (weld sizzling) Woo! First impressions, it looks
like it's got fish lips on there. (laughs) It's pretty funny. But I mean, otherwise,
made a lotta progress in the last couple hours, so I'm stoked. All right, next step, we'll take the entire bumper assembly off, finish welding it up,
get it nice and solid, finish up some loose ends. - Okay. - But we're gonna do that tomorrow. - Tomorrow. (bright music) (grinder rasping) - And we're back bright and early at the Inglewood Propulsion Laboratory, and we're ready to finish up our armor. (bright music) (weld zapping) - So the skid plate is under the car, currently all tacked up. The fit is really good. For such a complicated thing, it was actually relatively easy to do. And now we're gonna drop it back down, hopefully maintaining the shape and not breaking any of the tack welds, and then we're gonna hand it off to Adam, and he's gonna finish
welding while we move on to other stuff. (weld sizzles) (bright music) We're just gonna body these things, dude. We're just gonna boom on boulders. It's gonna be sick. All right, skid plates are officially on. Yeah, I think so. Cool. (bell dings) Onto the sliders. - [Brandon] These things are sweet, man, some aftermarket sliders. - Westin's, dude. I think Westin also makes cowboy boots. Oh, Lord. It's important, with
a busy shoot schedule, to get your reps in, okay? Just 'cause you're working
on the body of a truck, doesn't mean you can
forget about your body. So I want you to respond to
this video down in the comments, #GetYourRepsIn. Go on Instagram, tag me, tag me in a video of you getting your reps
in, #GettingMyRepsIn. You get low, (groans)
and then you get high. You don't have to live
your life as Team Low. Someday, you too could be Team Hi. - [Sportscaster] I don't know that anyone has moved the bar with that much weight. - Times like this, I default to some very important advice I received from one of my mentors, Mike Porter. I was like, "Mike, I don't know how to do any of this stuff." And he's like, "Just (bleep) with it." So let's see what happens. (weld zapping) Nope. (weld zapping) Ah (bleep), burned a hole. But it's not a bad hole. (weld zapping) Ah, no. (weld zapping) It's pretty bad, but I'll grind it down. All right, bumper's on. All that's left to do for me
is put on the rock sliders, which we're stealing
from Hi Team, sort of. (cheerful music) (bell dings) - This is so serious. - So, about an inch of
clearance, you think? Is that enough? - No, less than an inch will be all right. I'm gonna read the instructions and see what we can get away with. - Read the instructions? That's a good idea. - [Brandon] Yeah, go right there. Yeah, that's good. (grinder rasping) - (exhales) Moment of truth. (cheerful music) Not too bad. (cheerful music) (weld grinding) - Rock sliders are done. - [Zach] Wow, this thing actually... - [Aaron] Got some movement to her. But they are on, and I don't
think they're ever coming off. (bell dings)
- No. - Hi Truck has some very,
very beefy rock sliders going on their truck. And we kinda ran out of
time to make our own. We gotta get started on the
next modification tomorrow. So I opted to steal the
sliders that Hi Truck had because they actually did
pretty well on our testing day. Looking underneath, there are
some decent scratches on here from being functional. So I feel good using these, and they're pretty easy to bolt on. They just go right on the truck. (buzzer buzzing)
(crowd booing) - Aw, hand me down pants, those are gonna look good on here. - Thank you, man.
- They'll fit the truck. - [Crowd] Oh! - One of the main things
we were running into when we were out in the
desert is the rear overhang. That kinda limits our departure angle. - So it looks like
we've cut the whole side of the truck bed. It's gonna be interesting. No stock bumper after this one. (saw buzzing) (wrench banging) Like a glove. (grinder whirs) (weld zapping) Drop it a little bit. (quirky music) Woo, we got dimes down there. - Stacking up some
dimes, a little (buzzes). - How's your stuff covered? - Yeah, ya know, uh. I really think best course of action is to retain the skid plate that we have. - [Crowd] Oh! - We'll see what happens. I think that's the move. We don't have a break at the shop, a metal brake to bend sheet metal, so we'd have to cut channels
in it with a grinding wheel and then kinda bend it (muffled speaking). (buzzer buzzing) I think it can handle
whatever we can throw at it. - So the bumper's tack welded together. We're going to probably
take it off at this point so we can weld it, and I
think for sake of time, we're just gonna keep it as it is 'cause we could go through
with a measuring tape and probably fine tune
everything if we wanted. - That's not the life we're living today. - Right. - Let's keep trucking, baby. (drill blatting) (suspenseful hip hop music) (weld buzzing) (suspenseful hip hop music) (grinder whirring) (weld grinding) - And a bumper appears
before our very eyes. (bell dings) (weld buzzing) - Okay. (bright, upbeat music) All right. (wrench cranks) All right, the front bumper is done. And honestly, I'm really, really excited with how it came out. I think it looks really great. All things considered, I'm ecstatic. This thing looks really great. (bell dinging) - I think we salvaged an almost disaster. (bright, upbeat music) - All right, we've got both trucks back to our testing location, and it's time to retest our approach
and departure angles. Now, we did this test before, but with stock wheels and tires. We've now got bigger wheels and tires, but both trucks have the same size tire. So while we've both gained
a little ground clearance from the last time that we did this test, we've gained the same amount. So really, the difference
comes down to the bumpers. - So it's fair. Fair is square. - Super fair. - So I don't want anyone
in the comments saying, "Hey, it's not fair," 'cause guess what. It's fair! Okay? We thought of it, and it is fair! - Yeah. - This feels like a Disney ride. (men laugh) Huh?
- Hah? - [James] Dang, dude, 400
pounds of dude back here. That was great, man. Give it the beans. Back off the beans. - [Zach] Hold on, hold on, hold on. Rear bumper, rear bumper. - [Nolan] Yes! - [James] What? - That was great. I don't think we hit anything. - They gained a lotta
clearance in the back. When we had the stock bumpers on, we would just scrape all the
way down both of the hills, but now with this thing,
I guess moving it up, it was quiet. We could sneak around
like ninjas out here, like desert ninjas. - [Zach] Hear that? He called us desert ninjas, the sickest nickname ever. - (groans) Okay, so that's our skid plate. - Skid plate, doing its job down there. - [James] Didn't feel
anything on the rear bump. - No drag there. Drag that plate, baby. (upbeat music) Front bumper, good, no contact. Yeah, that is a beefy truck. You can call this thing the Tankoma. We have added a lotta weight, and you can definitely feel it. - Yeah, I'm really happy with it. We didn't scrape the rear at all. Departure angle improved. I think approach angle, not
really affected too bad. - Heavy truck, though. - It is so much heavier now. - Very heavy. - It takes so much more to get it going and so much more to get it to stop. The amount of input that you
have to put in with your feet is way different, both
accelerating and braking, so. - Big beef. - But I think that's sometimes
what you want in a truck. (upbeat, driving music) - All right, so we're
running the course backwards this time around because
we were able to complete it in the second episode. So I think that it's good that we're doing it
the opposite direction. Mechanically, grip-wise,
not much has changed. There is more weight on the truck, so that might actually
give them a little bit of a mechanical grip advantage. - Personally, I think the extra weight's really gonna help 'em. - But, because we're
running the opposite course, it gets hard immediately. - So this gap's gonna be a little tricky, and then this is the first
big thing we have to avoid or we could slip off here. And I think we're gonna be fine. Bring her up. Okay, keep on coming, straight like that. - Let's see if the clearance. See, if they didn't have that bumper, the bed might've been scraping there. - All right, that looks good. So we're gonna wanna go
pretty hard left now. - So something we did on both
trucks is both of our bumpers really elevate the front. There's no bumper blocking the front of the wheels now, really. So that allows us to
get onto these obstacles with more ease. - Okay, okay, back up, and
turn the wheel to the right. (metal banging)
Sweet. - That was on the skid plate. - Skid plate. - But that's what you want. Skid plate's taking all the abuse. James is cooking through this right now. - Thanks, bud. - Now we're getting into
where I'm concerned about. This was the hard section
when we ran it clockwise. Now we're running counterclockwise. I'm not sure how it's gonna work out. Also, before we started shooting, we brought the stock trucks
here before we had done any work on 'em, and we could not make it up this. - Watch it it dig in now. Front right. - [Nolan] Ah, that's what I was talking. That's where it got stuck.
- Okay, okay. All right, so back it up, and basically, we just need to do this
with a touch of momentum. (engine hums) Yep, yep, yep, you gotta
just keep going there. All right, stop. Back up. We gotta do that again. - It's very scary. - [Zach] Giver the (bleep) beans, James! Son of a (bleep)! Doesn't need to be great. Yep, yep, ah! Okay, back up. - There you go. (truck squeaks) That was four tries on this part. - [James] Mm-hm. - I think we give you one
more, and if you can't make it, that's it. - All right, cool. One more try, we'll take it. It feels like I'm just gonna
drive off on that side. - [Zach] You're close, but you're not. - Give her the beans, James! (suspenseful music) - [Zach] Right now. - Oh! - [Zach] It was close - It was so close, but the
driver's side rear let go. - Need some lockers. - Well, it looks like
it was actually tougher to run the buff horseshoe backwards. So even though we've got more clearance, thanks to our newer, bigger tires and we've got all our armor
and our increased approach and departure angles, we still are stuck. So let's see what Low Team can do. - [Nolan] Approaching the first obstacle, just a straight on pylon. I think this is where our
bumpers are gonna help us 'cause we got rid of a lot
of material in front of them. So now we can just kinda
approach 'em head on. - [Aaron] Left-hand down. That's it. - Dang, look at their rock sliders. Those look really good. They look really familiar. - You can do it, Nolan. - [Aaron] Left-hand down. - [Zach] He better not (bleep) make it. - Dude, what of he makes it
first try, then what do I do? - And roll forward. Straight a little bit. Left-hand hard, hard,
hard, hard, more, more. - That's all the way. This is where Hi Team got stuck. Let's see what we can do. I feel like we burned
through the first half in half the time that Hi Team did. - [Aaron] Lightning speed. - It was pretty fast. It felt good. - Wait, what? - He just said that they made
it through the first half in half the time. - Who said? - Nolan. - His internal clock has
taken a beating, apparently. (James chuckles) (truck squeals) - Yes, he got stuck. - Yeah, I mean, you hate to see it. - Just another day at the office. - [Aaron] Just consistent
with the throttle. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. - [James] He did it. - [Zach] He did it. - [James] I hate him. - [Aaron] Okay, so you're teetering. - Oh, that's close. That's all the way. - Yep, keep it there. Left-hand down. Nice. - [Nolan] Ooh! - [Aaron] Um, we might've got stuck, dude. I kinda wedged your passenger
front wheel on that rock. - What a turn of events we've got here. - Oh, well, well, well,
you got a little further, but maybe you didn't get far enough. Maybe you're a little stuck boy now. - Go, go, go, go, go, go. - [James] Man, they're pretty stuck. - It looks like they
beached on the skid plate. I think we're gonna have
to try to pull 'em out. We're gonna use their
fancy, new, homemade bumper and the shackle they put on it. Let's hope you guys welded
this bumper up real good. - Hopefully it doesn't fly off. Everyone kinda clear out. (laughs) I'm like 90% sure the
bumper's gonna be fine, 95, 85, 90% sure it's gonna be okay. - [Aaron] Yeah, go. - [Nolan] Yes! - (chuckles) The bumper
lives to see another day, and the truck's unstuck. What more could you want? - That's craftsmanship, Aaron. That's you, Dog. It worked. I always knew it would. - Both trucks got stuck. We definitely gained a
little bit of clearance with our new bumpers, some confidence because now we both have rock sliders, and hitting the bottom of that skid plate sounds a lot better than hitting
the bottom of our trucks. But we both did get stuck, and I think that came down to traction. As soon as one of our
wheels lifts, it just spins, so we're gonna have to go
back to IPL and address that. So, Nolan, does more
expensive mean more better? - I don't know. I think it's varies by part. - Let's start at the front of the truck. - Yes. - Front bumper. - I think Aaron and
Zach did a wonderful job on the front bumper. I really, really love
how the bumper looks. It's got great clearance,
and it was strong enough to get pulled off the buff horseshoe. I think that's a win. One downside of building
bumpers yourself, James, is that you've gotta
have a bunch of tools. We had to have a welder,
lots of grinders, a notcher, a pipe bender, as well,
and a good understanding of geometry, which I did not. I had some flashbacks
of eighth grade math. Anyway, let's talk about
your bumper, James. - We didn't have to use any tools. Our bumper was $1,000,
which is pretty expensive. It's really heavy, so we
added a bunch of weight. We lost a little bit of clearance in our suspension on the front. Looks-wise, not my favorite. I think it's a little much. - It's a miss for me. It doesn't really match the
rear bumper, in my opinion. - I would feel confident running
over pretty much any animal with it, though. - (laughs) Yeah, for sure. - So if you have an old deer or a buffalo that you would like to
put out of its misery in bold fashion, hit me
up, nolan@donutmedia.com. Overall, for the front
bumper, just straight up, I would give the win to you guys. - [Nolan] I agree. Thank you. - I think this whole
episode is a great example of great beginner fabrication projects, which brings us to our skid plate. I've never welded on anything before, but at the end of the day,
it came together really well. It looks awesome. It's so strong, and I can
board slide a truck now whenever I want. It gives me so much more confidence. - I do feel bad that we ran
outta time for the skid plates, but, dude, after looking
at your skid plate, that would've been
another two days, I think. - Oh, for sure. The clearances are so small. The thought that was
put into our pre-cut kit is mind-blowing. Our kit was $460. All of your materials, even
though you didn't use any of them, were about $150. I think it's totally worth it. - Yeah, I don't think we would
have been able to engineer that $300 Hi versus Low skid plate, even though we didn't make ours. I'm choosing Hi. - 100%. - Let's move on to another
fail for the Low Team, the rock sliders. - [James] They technically
are not rock sliders. They're step tubes. - [Nolan] They are step tubes. - So they're for your feet and decoration. - Yeah, when I was putting them on, I kinda knocked on 'em. I was like, "That sounds
a little plastic-y." - On the other end of the spectrum, we have our set of 4x
Innovations real rock sliders. They were about $550, and
the step tubes that you stole go for about $300. So there's a price difference of $250. - Again, I feel bad that we did not do the proper rock sliders. In fact, I ordered material to do it. Just again ran outta time. It's the first thing that
you should learn to fabricate because you're only doing
two bends on a slider and you're just making plates
to put it onto your truck, totally doable. You can do it. - And finally, we've reached
the back of the truck. - Look, man, I was given a
task, tried to make it happen. I'm pretty happy with how
Low bumper came out, in fact. - [James] Yeah, I think it looks cool. - We rounded off the edges,
made some caps for the ends, painted it all nice. - Zach, the director's laughing at you. - I know he's laughing. I see that. - Because you said you made it look nice. The first day that we were
ready to put it together, Joe was out sick. I thought I was gonna cry. We pulled it together. - [Nolan] You guys made it happen, man. - [James] I think it looks awesome. - It looks great, and
it's got places for you to put swing arms on there. I can't wait to see what those look like. James, if we had to start over tomorrow and rebuild our armor
and spend our own money, which components would you choose? - Low Truck front bumper,
Hi Truck skid plate, Hi Truck rock sliders,
Hi Truck rear bumper. - [Nolan] I would go
Low Truck front bumper, Hi Truck sliders and skid plates
and Low Truck rear bumper. - Let us know what you
would do in the comments. Hit that subscribe button. Hit that like button. I know you guys have been drooling over my hat this whole time. It's now available at donutmedia.com. Make sure to tune in next week. We have another super exciting episode. It's another really hard one. You guys actually had a really easy time. - Pretty easy, yeah. - We had a pretty hard one. Thank you so much for watching. We're having such a good time, even though we're crying
ourselves to sleep every night and I am financially ruined. - He's only half joking. Be kind. - I love you. - See you next time.
