- [Nolan] No way.
- [James] Shut up.
- $1000 set of wheels and tires.
- Versus $3600 set of wheels and tires.
- Does more expensive really mean more better?
- Let's find out.
- Go.
We bought two identical Nissan 350Z's.
- Almost identical, as identical as we could find.
- We've been modifying them to be fun,
daily drivers that you can take to the track.
- One Z gets expensive parts
and the other Z gets cheap parts.
- Then we're gonna test them to see which components are
actually worth spending your hard-earned money on.
- For my wheels, I went with a set of Advan RG3's.
They're very strong, they're very lightweight.
They're $667 a wheel, which is nothing to sneeze at.
And for tires, I went with these Bridgestone Potenza RE71Rs.
They are $265 a tire.
I got them on sale.
- And on the cheaper side, I went with XXR 527 wheels.
They're 127 bucks each.
And for tires, I went with Federal 595 RS-RR's.
They're only 136 bucks a tire.
What do you say we open up our wheels
and see what they look like?
- Those are sick, dude.
We went with an 18 by 10 square setup on my Z.
This is light, dude.
- Let's see what mine look like.
I will be honest.
I like the way mine look more than yours.
- [James] You like them more?
- [Nolan] Yeah, I like the more spoke-y look.
- So why do mine cost six times as much as Nolan's?
Well, alloy wheels can be made using different methods
that determine their weight and strength.
My Advans are flow formed.
The process gives the wheels more strength
without adding more material,
so they come out stronger and lighter.
Each of them weighs in at about 20 pounds.
- So mine are low pressure cast wheels.
And they weigh about 24 pounds each.
- So Nolan's suspension
is gonna have to work a little bit harder
to control its heavier wheel than mine will.
- And my wheel has what's called a multi-lug pattern,
so this wheel can fit on many different cars,
not as cool as the single lug pattern.
- No, it's sort of a telling that your wheels are cheap.
- Yeah, no, I'm gonna try to keep this as nice.
I'm gonna try to keep these, I'm sorry.
I'm gonna try to keep these as nice as possible.
- So this is the first test you gotta do with the tire,
see how good they bounce.
- Oh yeah.
Rubber compounds are serious business.
- Unlike rubber chickens,
which are technically a joke business.
- Tire companies are super protective
of what's in their secret sauce.
Plus, the government's tire quality grading standards
aren't strictly enforced.
And the way manufacturers rate them all
is kind of unverifiable too.
It's just weird.
- Yeah, so while the Federal 595 RS-RR tires
going on Nolan's car have a 200 treadwear rating,
that doesn't mean that they'll perform the same
as my 200 treadwear Potenza RE71R's.
It's time to stop being polite and start getting real.
Can cheap tires match the performance of expensive tires?
- I hope so.
- I hope so, I hope so too.
I would much rather spend $500 than 1200.
- Ridiculous.
- All right, you can spend all the money in the world
on wheels and tires,
but if they don't fit right,
then they're gonna be a really expensive paperweight
that sits in your room forever.
Ask me how I know.
Unlike most projects,
the hard work for fitting wheels and tires on your car
comes before you even open your toolbox.
Research is the name of the game here, boys and girls.
- There are a lot of numbers on a tire,
but there are only three that you need to know
to make sure they fit on your car.
The width, the profile or the aspect ratio,
and the diameter.
The width is self-explanatory.
It's the width of the tire.
So these are 265s.
Generally, the wider a tire is, the more grip it will have.
But the more rolling resistance it will have too.
So it might eat up some gas mileage.
- The second number is a measurement of the side wall
but it's not in millimeters.
It's what's called an aspect ratio.
45 means that the side wall is 45%
of the measurement of the width.
So the width is 245 millimeters.
This 45 means that the side wall is 45% of 245.
- The smaller your tire aspect ratio,
the less tendency of the tire to shift
back and forth on the wheel, the less rollover it has,
but it'll be a lot harsher of a ride.
You're pretty much riding on rubber bands.
- And then the last number, that 18,
that's just the diameter of the hole in the tire,
so you know what size wheel to stuff in it.
And those are the things that are important to know
whether or not you can fit them under your car.
So that's tires.
That's pretty easy.
- With wheels, there's a lot of things to consider
and a lot of scary numbers involved.
But don't sweat it.
Zach and Nolan are gonna break it down.
I attempted to break it down.
The more you move the center of,
the more you move the hub.
- There's really five numbers you need to know with wheels.
You need to know your diameter,
so you need to know if it matches the tire
you're putting it into.
- The next measurement is the width.
And wider wheels lets you run wider tires.
But you can also run skinnier tires.
And if we really wanted to go full stance boy,
we could put super skinny tires on our wide wheels
and kill ourselves when we're driving over twisty roads.
- You need to know your bolt pattern,
and you need to know your hub center bore
to know whether or not it will slip over
the hub on your car.
So that's all important, but that's all pretty simple.
- The last measurement on the wheel is the offset,
and this is scary, but it's not, it's not.
- To understand offset, let's first find zero offset.
Zero offset is the dead center line of the wheel.
And then when we talk about positive offset,
that means that we're moving
the mounting face of the wheel, this thing,
we're moving that positively outwards.
So towards the face of the wheel is positive.
That's it.
And then that lets you know how far out
your wheel's gonna poke or how far in it's gonna be sucked
and ultimately how it's gonna look
because an 18 by 10 could fit a million different ways
given a million different offsets.
But with the internet, with our forums,
we know what people run,
we know what looks good,
and so, we've got some targets to hit.
- You definitely want to look up the torque specs
for your lug nuts.
You don't want to be driving down the street
and have your wheels come off.
I've been in a car where it happened, not mine.
It was, one, terrifying, and two, very embarrassing.
Yes.
We don't have to roll the fenders.
- We have to roll the fenders
because our wheels are very wide
and the offset is relatively aggressive,
so we're taking the fender lining out.
If you did your math a little bit wrong
or if you're just going full send on your fitment,
you can buy yourself a few extra millimeters of wiggle room
by rolling your fenders.
This usually consists of
bending the inner lip of your fender upward
without really changing
the exterior look or shape of the panel.
You can do it with a purpose built fender roller like this,
or you can go old school with some hammers.
Nobody does it like this anymore.
This is some real artisan, artisan stuff.
- (bleep) I just broke something.
- [James] And it always helps to add some heat
to try and keep the paint from cracking.
- I think we got plenty of room.
I think the fender pulling and rolling did the trick.
I don't think we're gonna rub at all.
- So Nolan's car is slammed.
- Clout god.
- And I am honestly a little jealous
that his car is so slammed.
- Gotta get lower, dude.
I really love it, dude.
- Let's go see if this puppy rubs any.
- More, more, more.
- You think it's gonna rub?
- No.
Hooks it up.
- Hooks up, fo' sho.
- Road noise on the new tires.
- We got a little bit of rubbing.
Yeah, there's a definite drone to the tire noise.
- These feel good,
like around that kind of corner earlier,
you could kinda feel it push a little in the front.
- It's like on rails, man.
God, James's car is gonna feel amazing.
- Damn, we're not even sure if it's second anymore.
- No, we're just stuck to the road.
- You have so much confidence with these tires.
All the confidence we took away with the $300 coilovers,
you get back with these tires.
- But their tires at a fraction of the price
are definitely 80% as good, if not more.
- Dude, it's great.
No rubbing, nothing.
- We might have just ride height it a little bit,
but that's just 'cause we want to look doper.
- It feels very planted, very confidence inducing,
which might be a bad thing for guys like me and Zach.
I'm really happy with it.
It feels really, really, really good.
- What a combination of smells.
I guess what we learned today is that
hot boy isn't a choice, it's a lifestyle.
- That's a good bang for your buck, man.
I would be happy with that for 1300 bucks.
That's legit.
- Zach, are you ready?
- [Zach] I am ready.
- [James] Last episode, we set up a slalom course
to test the handling of our new coilovers with stock tires.
This time, we ran the same course
to see how much of a difference
our new thick, grippy boys made.
- So I think for us to really see the limit of these tires,
we need to be on a track and really running hot laps,
heat cycling the tires.
I think the Federals and the Bridgestones
are gonna feel very similar for what we're doing.
- When you look at both runs side by side,
you can clearly see that low car's Federal RS-RR's
maintain traction noticeably better than the stock car's.
In hi car, the results were even more apparent,
especially around the last cone.
You can see here the rear end of hi car
kick out with the stock tires,
but with the Bridgestone RE71R's,
that booty stayed solidly planted.
Next up, we ran what's called a lateral G test.
Basically, you drive around in a big circle
as fast as you can until the tires lose grip.
If you've ever been on a merry-go-round,
this is kinda like that but way more fun.
And if you think about it,
there's way more horses in this one.
I'm talking hrsprs.
Did you break it, Lewis?
I didn't see.
In this episode, we're testing the tires,
but both cars have different suspension setups
that affect how they drive.
- The low car was jouncing, bouncing all over the place,
looked super unplanted, looked uncomfortable.
- The front end was just sort of.
- And the hi car, I could have done that all day.
It was very comfortable.
It was eating up every imperfection as we were going around,
and it felt very neutral.
We eventually just kinda pushed it out,
but it was hardly even over-steer.
And I'm super happy with the way this thing feels.
- [James] And finally, we conducted
a 60 to zero deceleration test.
You might think that this would be testing the brakes,
but the traction of the tires actually plays
the biggest role in your stopping distance.
Turns out 60 to zero deceleration tests are really hard.
- I got like 55.
- Did you find it harder to do than you thought it would be?
- Yeah, yeah, 'cause I would get up to 65
and be like, okay, I can let off and it'll slow down.
And then you let off and it's like, still 65,
and I was like.
- But we think that we were able to get
enough good runs out of each car
to draw some pretty decent conclusions.
So does more expensive.
- [Both] Mean more better?
- The results are in.
- And they may shock you.
- They probably won't.
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For the slalom test, the tires made a huge difference, Nolan
for both cars compared to stock.
Low car ran a 6.57 and hi car ran a 6.52,
which is 7.6% improvement over stock.
- A half second difference over a 400 foot course is.
- Huge.
- That's really big, yeah.
- Massive.
And I also want to point out that hi car is now officially
faster than low car.
- We're at one and one now, we're tied.
- So for the radial test, both cars were consistently
breaking loose at around 40 miles an hour.
Low car got up to around 39 miles per hour
before they broke loose.
Hi car was around 41.
- Two miles an hour,
not huge. - Not bad.
- But also.
- Not nothing.
- Yeah, not nothing.
- Low car suspension probably made it more difficult
to hold onto that.
You guys were bouncing
like my wife (bleep).
Finally, the 60 to zero deceleration tests.
Regardless of all of our driver error and difficulty,
we were able to get a pretty consistent data set,
but when this car was new, it stopped at 120 feet.
Hi car was a little bit better than low car,
but both cars are considerably better than stock.
There's just so much more contact.
- I would think maybe the compound has a little bit more
to do with that than the width.
- As far as wheels go, I don't think Nolan or I
are good enough drivers to notice the difference
in wheel performance.
Basically, buy something nice enough that's not gonna break.
Stay safe.
And then, it just comes down to how hard you want to flex.
In my case, with the Advans, I have so much clout.
It's coming out of my nose.
- Personally, I like my wheels better.
I'm sorry, I'm not gonna say the Advans look bad
because they don't, they look amazing.
But I like the XXR's better.
I think they're great value for the money.
- I wouldn't buy the XXR's.
I would buy something slightly cheaper than the Advan.
- You have to pick one of the two.
- One of the?
If I had to pick one of the two,
I would get the Advans because I have a reputation to uphold
and I can't be rolling around on multi-lug pattern wheels.
So Nolan, does more expensive mean more better?
Technically, yes. - Sort of.
- Definitely. - Sort of, yes.
- Definitely, 100%.
In every test, they perform better
than your tires. - I know, but it's not.
It wasn't like the suspension tests
where it's like immediately apparent.
- Ask me which ones I would buy.
- Which tires would you buy, James?
- I would buy the Federals.
- Okay.
- I want a car that I can break the rear end loose
when I want to.
- I'm with you on the Federals
just because, not for the reason that
you want a looser car but because
you have to be such a better driver to feel any difference.
Also, I just want to address some comments
from the last video
saying that we were sponsored by KW
or that we're gonna be sponsored by
the best parts in every episode.
Not true, we bought
every. - All of those.
- Part that you see in this entire series.
We paid for.
- Thank you for watching HiLow.
Next week, I'm gonna throw a huge brake kit onto hi car,
and Nolan.
- Yeah, we're gonna put some upgraded brake pads,
upgraded rotors, and some steel braided brake lines
on the low car and see how those upgrades perform.
- I love you.
- Be safe.
What, that's not my catch phrase.
Be nice.
- I love you.
- See you next time.
- How are we gonna put it on a shirt?
You can't remember it.
- I don't know.