$20,000 vs. $50,000 Custom 350z

twenty thousand dollar nissan

350z

the first fifty thousand dollar nissan

350z

just more expensive really means more better let's find out what the final battle is we bought two almost identical nissan 350z that we have been modifying to be daily drivers that you can take to the track 1z I have a bunch of cheap parts for a total of 20k and the other z has a bunch of really nice expensive stuff that adds up so they're ready for this 50k for an 18 year old nissan last time i spent that much money on an 18-year-old Epstein. island today, after six months of hard work, we are finally putting them face to face on a real track to see if all that money translates into the real world, not on the internet forum, no, my uncle says this produces results in the real world, but before doing it. that we're going to break down all the modifications we've thrown at these two cars that add up to that crazy amount of dollars, yes, and then we'll walk you through all the steps you need to take to get your car to its first track day so that don't do the same stupid thing my car jumped consequently we thought it was raining but turns out we were just spitting coolant all over the windshield dumb person mistakes we made on our first track day which is today for the first time around the block we put some new wheels with coilovers, changed the color of our cars, added some turbos and then drove to the world famous Sandia Speedway in Albuquerque, New Mexico for a showdown on the track, but we weren't really done there in the usual car fashion of the project none of the cars were complete when anything ever was complete.

We had to get the band back together and finish these things once and for all. First, we handled some unfinished business. Both cars were bolted into four-point roll cages and finally got some. Not only do proper harnesses make the cages look sick, but I find the tall car is a little stiffer and I honestly feel safer going to the track in a car that is caged. The lower car also feels much stiffer and I totally agree with that feel. It's cool to see a roll cage in your rear view mirror, speaking of looking at things behind you, we put a damn wing on it and a body kit for a tall car, we picked out an original period correct Sea West body kit, it came with everything less new. mirrors, so we added some carbon fiber mirrors to the mix, like the low car does, we got a duraflex body kit and since it didn't come with a wing or hood, we just had to get a new carbon fiber hood and a big old wing to match. the car tall, but installing it is a story for another time, watch that episode, so now we have these new body kits on cars that don't match, so what do we do?

Well, we match them with the color of the real car fashion that we choose with. a professionally installed 3m vinyl wrap for the under rig this was our chance at redemption after installing all our new tricks we had to go back to the cabin and give Plasdip another chance and this time we really did our homework and it's something really Well. They did that because I don't think Nolan's little heart could handle any more disappointments you were rich some of you were very mean to my boy plastidip community calm down everything went well we talked to the plastic god himself in z aka the biceps boy, uh, gave us great guidance and I think the results speak for themselves, massive gains, nolan, I think I can officially say you've redeemed yourself, thank you, okay, next to match the look of our race car z, we needed to order our fuel.

Injectors, we had previously installed turbos on both cars, but with all that extra air from the turbo stuck in our engine, we needed more fuel to not blow them up. The high team got a set of very expensive beach jobs, 600cc, squirty boys and low team. I got a set of used R35 gtr 550cc injectors and to feed them we installed a new Wallbro 255lph fuel pump but installing them wasn't enough we had to retune the cars to run the new injectors so we went over to our guys at specialty z and we got the cars tuned on the dyno, the low car made 302 horsepower and the high car made a very impressive super masculine handsome 372 horsepower that comes super low in the rev range just usable power man, just tap that guy and eat I'm not going to say it's perfect, there's always room for improvement, but it's almost perfect, very, very good.

On the low car we discovered some leaks in our turbo system as well as a hose that disconnected from our wastegate, we have them. The issues were resolved pretty confidently by saying we're generating a little more power, maybe more power, maybe putting that on a t-shirt, actually don't do that, that will be copyright infringement and I'll sue you, no I'll do it, and I'll put it all in. From that sweet, sticky power to the ground, we gave both cars a complete suspension overhaul Now both cars were already sitting on adjustable coil-over shocks, but that wasn't enough.

The low car got some Megan Racing sway bars and adjustable control arms from eBay and the tall car got New White Line sway bars and an avalanche of SPL adjustable suspension components, so awesome that we also have adjustable front upper control arms, arms of rear camera and front and rear sway bar end links, then both cars were professionally aligned so we know we are comparing parts and not the alignment Next, it was time to help keep both cars fresh. It's easier said than done. On the tall car, we installed an aluminum Csf radiator. Shout out to Chris Forsberg because these are Nissan Zs.

We also have a Mishimoto dual fan and HPS silicone hoses. We cleaned one of the hoses and replaced it with an original one, although the lower car has a Megan Racing radiator and a 16-inch universal fan for cooling, but the truth is that we kept the OEM fan because it was much better than the B1. We got it and now that our inside was cool, it was time to make our outside even cooler. The low car has some super sick eBay headlights and taillights, questionable shine, and a very cool steering wheel. I love it, yes it makes all the difference, it really does.

The tall car has some pretty nifty

custom

LED taillights that have a bunch of different pattern settings including party mode, and then we also have some xk Glow rgb low glow LED lights and headlights that you can control with your damn phone. James is really good at his job. your phone on my phone i don't think you can do that with a tesla uh hey siri make my car a party it doesn't really work with siri no so now both z's look so hot oh until now, but there's one thing left for us to do let's run baby just no, yeah, let's not do that, the final showdown to see, more expensive actually means more, better, yeah, absolutely, this car rules, that car sucks Let's watch the video, I think you will be surprised.

A lot of people will drag their car to the track, but if you're like us, the car you drive on the track is the car you drive to the track, and if that's the case for you, you should really give your car a test ride around it. neighborhood, give it a try because the last thing you want is to hit the road and then break a coolant hose. We have to fix it in a gas station parking lot. We pass the lower radiator hose through a hole. That's bad, I just found an automatic zone. I can see her across the street.

They have the lower radiator hose in stock. Oh, I have to go to Amazon. They close in 20 minutes and then find a momentum leak. Fix it in a gravel parking lot somewhere. it's a 12 hour road trip or a three hour road trip which is high and then take your motel at one in the morning to get to the track at 6:30 in the morning, but if you make it to the track in a running car, then you are sure to have a good day and what a great day it has been. Zach's track days can be a little intimidating.

I know I felt very intimidated coming to my first track day. I already understand it. I understand the appeal. it's very fun, very exciting, I'm super nervous but very very excited, you may have to pay a $10 entrance fee, in most cases you will have to pass some kind of technical inspection, in this case it was a self inspection, so I just checked a lot of boxes, we say yes, sure, sure, sure, the body panels are not secured now, after you are all installed you will have to go to a drivers meeting, these flags are your only communication from your car to the outside.

The world is honestly very simple. It's like what flags mean. What are the rules for passing the first session? There are no point purchases. Second session. Immediate point purchases. If your car breaks down. What are you doing? It doesn't always mean you're in trouble. It could simply mean that we need to talk to you because you removed the wheel and we want to take a look at your car. There are two things you want to happen here. They want everyone to have fun. They want everyone to be safe. Hello Felipe, look. We look great, this is exciting, my first day on the track.

I've been doing stuff with cars for so long at a lot of events, they offer you the opportunity to have an instructor along with your shotgun, that's exactly what we did and I can't. I highly recommend it, it is very useful if you are a beginner or if it is your first time on this particular track, they will show you the racing line and give you some professional advice on the more complicated parts of the track, so I think it is the most useful. The instructor was telling me to look as far ahead as possible, look at your next turn or even the one after that if you can, think of your brain like it's a computer and you need to process the next few turns so that the further ahead you are.

You can look at the more prepared you are for what's coming, so break points, apex in and out, that's what we're going to focus on, yeah, he pointed out every trick on this track. Nice as in the first line, two of them, would you mind sharing them? No, my instructor Mike was amazing, the first session was learning the track a little bit, learning the etiquette of everything and just what you're supposed to do on a track day, then in this last session, the second session, we we focus more on our career line, uh, where? I'm supposed to put the car on which side of the track I'm supposed to be on for each corner and I really started focusing on going faster.

How do you feel really good? Fantastic man, there you go sharing the court, friend, having a coach is like that. Sick, it's unbelievable because I would break up before he told me to do it and then he would say stay and stay and stay, it's unbelievable, I think he caught the bug. I have to explain to my girlfriend that I have a new hobby that is expensive and will occupy me every weekend. Thanks Mike, you basically dusted everyone behind you. You've already overcooked yourself. The corner lost all grip at the front and you just went off the dirt.

The tires are not there. The tires yes. the main limitation of the car at this moment you went off the track what you went off I went off the track hell yeah, because it was that, the uphill, not the blind turn here, but this is where you go over it like a horseshoe kinda okay, so now you definitely have to go in and I like to overcook the tires and I just lost grip and then it was like I went straight, I just bounced over the dirt and went back up, man that's incredibly cool. It was a lot of fun, you got more than most of these guys, we got a hole, oh man, I don't know if you saw we're getting a lot of smoke at high revs.

I'm trying not to like it. I actually like to be real easy yeah look at it all this is oil coming out of that yeah I see yeah Aaron is going to try to modify his driving style by skipping third gear so we'll see it has to be that way man , and that's only three thousand dollars. The car feels a combination of very good and a little worrying on that last run. He was making some good, clean laps where I was pushing him. It's a little hot. I think there is still some air in the cooling system that needs bleeding, so I go. to purge it, hopefully, that will solve the cooling problem, this is all kind of game time, we have an instructor with us, next session, that's the most important one, I competed myself, I was much faster that time, this car is an amazing man.

It is fun. Aaron is worried about the smoke problem, but I think we'll be fine today. You beat my time by four seconds if you don't stay. My flying lap was fast with him. I lost the four wheels in the s. there buddy, I lost it, it's like I was blind and I was like, "Okay, well, I'm going to continue." I turned too muchlate. I got to the hill and thought, "I'm not going to do this, so I just like it." I kept the steering wheel straight and said: Yes, we did everything right. The name of the game today is fastest lap wins.

We originally planned to average each lap and take the fastest average time, but that doesn't seem possible right now. There are many. I think there are 109 cars in total today, going into the third session. The low car actually has the fastest lap time at 214. The fastest icar lap between James and I was 219. But James and I haven't gotten a clean lap yet. In the first two sessions we fell behind and had problems with overheating, so we had to back off a lot. I just bled the tall cars a little more, got more out of it and I think it's better. in shape, so I hope that in this round he is 215 or less, maybe we will see.

I feel like I can beat a tall car in a short car. Aaron is a professional driver, he literally is a professional driver and he is fast and he is also crazy, oh my God, this. The car is incredible. I've driven a tall car and I know what it can do. It's certainly a better car, but the button wheel is a very quick ride. Two minutes gives you plenty of time to recover. He's definitely endured it a lot longer than us. If we had not already been excluded from the fight on this track, we have a chance.

We spent ridiculous amounts of money on this car. We can't lose it. I will push this car beyond its limits. I'll break it. The clue to win this today, oh damn, buddy, we were cooking, yeah, we really were, oh no, oh, sorry. That's it, sure, it's a motor, buddy, sorry guys, coming into this first corner, after the straight, they heard a big backfire, did you hear that? Yeah I was braking really fast and immediately the car sounded very different like it was going down a cylinder I'm pretty sure I blew it it sounded like a subaru boxer engine oh my god dude I know that's okay for a car low, it means this car is retired from the track, it will go back to the donut but the engine is destroyed, it needs salt, uh, the low car is still here, it just needs a heart transplant, so the low car lost the cylinder and is out of the race luckily for them the tall car just got a black flag so nice even I guess it happens dude we got a black flag cuz We were shooting a bunch of smoke out the back ok we broke the car , I think we can break ours too, so yeah, a little disappointed, we don't go around that much.

Hopefully we can take them home. How bad did you do? break yours, we're putting it in the trailer, really, yeah, damn, that's all he wrote on a low car, eh, I mean, duh, so technically, although both cars are a little busted, I would say ours is better, it isn't. a nice win, I would have liked to win more cleanly, it doesn't matter if you win by an inch or buy a broken engine, so with that both cars are broken, now let's try to figure out who won because none of us won, but we all won. Well back to the studio, more expensive means more is better, the results are good since we broke both cars.

I don't know. My advice. What I learned is that you will have a lot more fun in a slower racing car than you will in a real real one. Fast car no, who could have seen it coming, I don't know, okay, so during our only session where both cars were on the track before both cars went off the track, the team in high work of auto zak got a 213.9 wow and aaron did it. a 216.7, which is, you know, a tremendous difference slower, yeah, but during practice, Aaron ran two 14 14.3, which is basically less than a second, less than a second, it's like half a second slower than the car tall car, so the rule was to win the fastest lap, so The technically tall car won, but literally by less than half a second and it's a shame we couldn't put Aaron in the tall car to see if the driver factor would make him would have compensated and I think it would, I think Aaron probably would have. made at least a second faster than low carb.

I'm very disappointed we didn't get to drive it on track day unfortunately we were planning on turning the cars off to feel the difference so that's unfortunate and the car high like we were overheating the whole day sucked yeah and I finally got kicked off the track for blowing a ton of smoke out the back, but overall, it's a very, very good car and I'm sad that not everyone got to drive it, you know? With how quickly we built these cars and the problems we had before we took them to the track, I had a feeling something like this was going to happen, unfortunately, yeah, which sucks, going to these track days just it gets hot. your brain just can't stop thinking about that feeling of having the car plugged in and just the sounds and the smells and everything it's like I can't wait to get back out and then I remember we broke the car down yeah. and yeah, which brings back the other point, I kind of feel the exact same thing.

I immediately said, "I'm going to get a track car, I don't care how fast it is as long as I can take it to the track and not." I don't want to break it, so if you're going to have a track car, the best way to have a track car is to have one that runs every time you want to go to the track. I also want to point out that the goal of building these two cars was to build fun daily drivers that you can take to the track and after trying to do that I don't know if it's possible, well I definitely think we failed in our ultimate goal, we can't drive them all the days. and have fun on the track.

I don't want to say the show was a waste of time because it certainly wasn't, but we still have a lot to learn when it comes to building cars, as you may have noticed from watching us build. These cars, I think at one point we had fun with daily drivers that we could take to the track without turbos, that's what I was going to ask you next, where do you think we went wrong? Turbo charging turbo so as not to say you can't. Drive a turbocharged car daily and take it to the track. I'm saying if we hadn't turbocharged our cars then we wouldn't have broken them.

I agree with you one hundred percent, we still have to diagnose what exactly went wrong. low car or high car or high car, but if we had had those same cars with the upgraded suspension, all the tires, the brakes without turbos, we really could have pushed them a lot harder because all day we were overheating, so knowing which one you would buy. 20,000 low car or 50,000. high car, you know, if I could drive a high car on the track, my answer would probably be different, but if I had to do it over again, I would drive the low car again without the turbo. even though the parts we bought were cheap, we completely changed the character of that car and it drove amazing while it ran, yeah man I mean, and I'm loyal to my car too, I think 100, I'd go for a tall car, may or may not charge turbo. but I love that car and we've been through a lot, so yeah, I think I should go with that one too.

It's surprising how clingy you can be. I don't know, I feel like I'm getting excited thinking about turquoise. z with ugly headlights and a big old wing, you know, it was a lot of fun, it's been a lot of fun, but we're not going to stop anytime soon, that's right, we're going to do another season of hi-lo. be new cars, let us know in the comments what you want us to build, we're talking, maybe trucks, maybe some muscle cars, I want front wheel drive drag cars, no one listens to me, I also want to build a sand rail and no one listens to me we're definitely open to any and all suggestions it's a bittersweet ending we have a ton of other shows coming out on donuts make sure you don't miss any of it follow donut donut media on all social media paul nolan nolan j sykes follow me on jamespumphrey solo because the z's are done doesn't mean we won't always be boost creeps we'll always be boost creeps and the high car and the low car will live forever let us know if you're team high or team low I just want to thank everyone for watching this show.

This is like one of the best experiences of my life and we couldn't do it without you guys seeing it, so thank you, thank you, thank you so much for watching. I love you, I can't wait to do it again, be nice, I love you, see you next time.