- Oh.
(uplifting music)
- [Nolan] $90 light kit versus $2,000 light kit.
- Does more expensive mean more better?
- Let's find out.
(upbeat theme music)
(mechanical whirring and clinking)
- Thank you to eBayMotors for sponsoring today's video.
At the start of the season,
I told you how eBay Motors has parts and cars
to fit any budget, which is great.
However, at the time,
I didn't realize how dang low our budget was.
At the time of this recording,
HiLow has currently spent a total of $19,495,
that's almost 20 grand.
Wanna know how much we've been allowed
to spend so far?
$4,000.
(inhales)
(exhaling and farting)
So whether you've got a hefty,
some would say greedy high budget,
or a more manageable, humble, salt of the earth,
low budget, like me,
eBay Motors has everything you're looking for,
and best of all, you know you can rely on them
because of all the added protection eBay Motors provides.
From their vehicle production program,
to their money back guarantee, there's no better place
to start pricing out your own high or low truck.
Head on over to eBay Motors, download the app,
or just click the link in the description below.
Now, I gotta get back to work.
(inhales and exhales)
Doing great, Aaron, I'll be there in a few minutes,
just need a little break.
(gentle 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 ocean.
One Taco gets expensive parts
and the other one gets cheap parts.
- [Nolan] Then we test them and see which components
are worth spending your hard earned cash on.
- It is a fact that everyone's slimy little eyeballs
need light in order to see the road so you don't hit things
- That's right, James, and the sun is not always an option,
because of an extremely scary thing, called nighttime.
- Yeah, that's right, Nolan, nighttime is extremely scary,
so, we're gonna fight the night.
High truck is getting this
KC HiLiTES Pro6 Gravity LED Light Bar
and a pair of KC Daylighters for a combined cost
of 2000 buckerenos.
You recognize that logo, that's Americana baby.
- It's like Marty McFly-- - Yeah, dude.
- What is this, Alaska?
Sun never goes down on a high truck.
- Low truck on the other hand,
is getting this $90 light bulb,
that's literally 20 times cheaper than high truck.
We got some little lights, some wiring,
can we get a katana sound effect, editor?
(whistling sound)
- [James] So, that's ugly.
- [Nolan] It's kinda spiky looking.
(James laughing) - [James] Yeah.
- I think they're gonna perform about the same, I really do.
There's a reason big truck guys all over the country
have put cheap light bars on their rigs,
That's 'cause these things are bright as (beep).
- There's only one way to find out,
let's put them on our trucks,
and go drive like big boys at night and not get scared.
- I brought my binky.
(James chuckling)
(upbeat music)
- So we spent 2000 bucks on lights
but we decided we didn't just wanna put them
directly on the roof of the truck, you know,
there's racks for that.
So we spent another 750 bucks on this rack
to put the lights on.
We like racks, you know?
- The point of this whole camping trip
is to hunt down the man who killed my father
and bring him to justice.
So I think that this heavy-duty roof rack by Prinsu
will be a perfect place to stow our prisoner.
- Is that your roof rack?
God damn, gee, that things (beep) mean looking.
- That's cool.
All right, Aaron, this is what we got,
we got a 42 inch light bar with some separate pods
for our mounting pleasure.
This is a combination spot and flood.
You see, it's got the floods on the outside
and the spot in the middle, for that focus type beam.
- Usually when you have like combination stuff,
you'll have like a separate wire,
or three wires to do a separate function.
So maybe it got a little bit brighter
or turned one off when the other was on,
it's not the case, it looks like you got on and off.
So if all of them were coming on with the on switch,
all of them were going off with the off switch.
- Ready? - I'm ready.
- Oh. - Oh, yeah
- [Nolan] How about this?
(screaming)
- [Aaron] Oh, dang.
- Is that pod attached? - Yes it is.
- That is, ah, (beep), that's brighter than this.
(Zack grunting)
- Dude, that roof rack is gonna be sick.
- [James] Don't touch it. - [Felipe] I'm not moving it.
- [Felipe] I'm not gonna touch it.
- Don't touch it, Felipe.
So we've got to bolt this right onto our roof,
which means once we put it on, there's no turning back,
you're saddling your truck with this rack.
(drill whirring)
- All right, now that we actually have
our roof rack installed, we can finally start focusing
on the actual point of this episode,
putting some lights on this truck.
- One thing that we run into time and time again,
with more expensive parts, is adjustability.
Low team has a light bar
that they bought from Spencer's Gifts.
It's the shape that it is, it goes where it goes,
it's gonna point straight, hopefully.
But we have the option to run our lights
in either straight,
which means every light goes in the same direction,
semi radius, which means the middle lights go straight
and the outside lights point towards the sides of the road,
and then full radius, which is essentially a rainbow,
every light has a little bit of degree to it.
Again, it's probably gonna take
a little bit more time to set up,
but in the long run, we're gonna have exactly what we need
when we need it, and to me, that's worth the money.
- [Zack] Well, that'll definitely work.
- Dude, that looks so cool.
- We've got the new extended piece right here
for our light bar.
Instead of drilling a bunch of holes,
I'm gonna try to find every crease that I can
up to that point
so that I don't have to snake this through anywhere sharp.
- It brings me no joy doing this,
I'm hurting just as much as you are.
(drill whirring)
It's fine.
I always knew it was gonna close, never a doubt in my mind,
freaking solid ass dude.
There it is, it's a real Baja truck right there.
- [Aaron] We got all the wiring routed,
hooked up to the battery, ready to go,
it should be ready to test.
Ready to rock?
- Go ahead.
(uplifting music)
- [Nolan] Oh, yeah. - [Aaron] Yeah.
- [Aaron] Dude, that's (beep) Bonsai.
That's classy right there.
- All right, our lights are on, they work,
they're brightest hell.
Aaron, they're pretty easy to install, huh?
- Yeah, that was cheese,
like compared to what these guys have to go through?
- Yeah.
(car horn honks)
Wow.
- Scale this from one to 10, this is like a three.
- Yeah, it was-- - Very easy.
- So this is Is about as much downward tilt as we have
just because of the fairing, but I think they look badass.
This thing finally looks like a toy truck
and that was the dream all along.
(drill whirring)
- Still have to wire them which is gonna be about
just as much work as we've done thus far.
And then I've still got a bunch of other lights to install.
It looks like low team's already done.
You know, being on a budget doesn't seem so bad
all of a sudden.
Luckily some of our past work
is paying off big time right now.
The switch panel that we installed
with the air compressor and the lockers,
having this switch box installed
gives me a really easy option for wiring up these lights.
I can just cut off most of the wiring of these lights
and wire them straight into this box,
and then they'll work from my switch panel
that's already installed.
All that time spent, it's really paying off.
♪ Get trucked up and call your mum ♪
♪ Get trucked up and call your mom ♪
♪ And tell your mom to get trucked ♪
♪ And then put grandma on the phone and say ♪
♪ Hey or lady, get trucked ♪
- Hell yeah, dude.
Good song.
- Let's talk about some specs.
The light bar on high truck is rated
at a brightness of 16,100 lumens,
sounds pretty bright, right?
Well, this guy right here is rated at 57,600 lumens,
not bad for $80.
However, a high lumens rating
does not a good light bar make.
Lumens are just measured off of the bulbs themselves,
the little LED cells that you can see in our light bar.
Lumens does not taking into account
the housing that the lights are in,
so that would be each of these individual mirror
kind of cones that they're living in.
So, just because it has a super high number does not mean
that this light bar is necessarily gonna be brighter
than high car.
So, a better measure of brightness
is a measurement called lux,
which measures brightness at a distance in a square meter.
There is some debate as to which metric is the best
for measuring brightness, but I think for our purposes,
it sounds like lux is probably the best one
because we wanna be able to throw a lot of light
a very far distance so we can see what's in front of us
out on the trail.
- Roof lights.
(imitates explosion)
Front lights, 'ey, 'ey.
Oh.
(ethereal music)
(laughing)
- [Felipe] You look like Bo Burnham.
- [Zack] Cool, dude.
- [James] Great work.
- [Zack] Good call, dude, good call.
(upbeat music)
- We're out here in the middle of the desert,
it is scary dark.
Before we get out on the trail,
we just wanna do a quick side by side
so we parked both trucks right next to each other.
We're setting up some cones at different distances,
we're gonna get some light readings at each of the cones.
- We wanna see how the light
actually floods out of these lights
and how it hits the ground,
what kind of beam patterns we have.
So what we've got here with the KC Lights
is kind of a multi-pattern.
They kind of split between a long throw spotlight
and more of a floodlight,
so they should do a really good job
of throwing light out far,
but also lighting up everything
kind of in our near vicinity.
Now these two at the front are just spotlights,
so these are just to throw light super far,
super down low under the dust,
and keep the trail lit up for us.
- All right, are we ready?
- The moment you've been waiting for your entire life.
- All right, three, two, one.
- [Nolan] Okay, that's pretty bright.
- [James] That's pretty bright.
- [Nolan] Pretty bright, its like daylight out there.
- Pretty damn good, dude.
- It's more of a flood.
- [James] It's more of a flood light.
What's it look like coming on?
I wanna see how scary you look.
(Nolan laughs)
(laughing) - [James] Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
(Nolan laughing)
I would be so scared.
- I feel pretty good, dude, for 80 bucks?
- It's pretty good, cannot deny.
- It might not be as good looking,
but puts out a lot of light.
- That's a slamming deal, for 80 bucks,
I don't think you'd be any happier than that.
Now, let's see how it compares to high team.
- Yeah.
- These lights better be bright.
Let's do it.
- [Aaron] Oh. - [Nolan] Damn.
- Dude, that's a spread.
- [Zack] So we've got maybe more of throw out
like the electrical boxes out there.
- [Nolan] Yeah.
- [Zack] I think are better lit up.
- It looks more focused.
- Yeah, our beam pattern I think
is supposed to be a bit narrower,
and that's even what it says, like from KC Lights.
- I was expecting a little bit more, to be honest.
- That $1,500 price tag on that top light bar,
you're really paying for that look, I think,
which I will say, really nice look.
KC Lights, that's like, that's iconic, you know?
- All right, so this is 40 feet and low trucks light,
light reading in terms of lux.
150 lux from here.
All right, flip over to high truck.
Nice.
320.
- 320.
- That's over double.
- [Aaron] ] It's obvious, it's a lot better,
it's a lot better, no hard (indistinct)
- [Zack] It's like using little LED pods
that we have on top of these cameras
versus using full studio lights.
- So as we've seen,
the light that's coming out of high truck's set up
is far superior, it's literally scientific,
but the only way we can tell how usable any of this is,
is to take these guys on the trip.
(upbeat music)
- [Zack] Damn, I mean it is like night and day.
- [James] Yeah.
- [Aaron] Look at all those reflectors.
- [Nolan] Yeah, really see it, if we turn it off.
Oh, dude.
- [Aaron] I mean, dude, for 80 bucks.
- [Nolan] This is scary, dude.
- [Aaron] Oh, (beep).
(both groaning)
(Nolan laughs)
- [Aaron] Jesus.
- [Zack] All right, now let's switch over (indistinct),
We'll swap trucks so we can see who's light is more usable.
- We're gonna experience each other's trucks firsthand,
as only four best friends can experience.
(Zack chuckling)
- [Cameraman] What?
(all laughing)
- All right, let's flip this light bar on.
Hey, whoa, it makes the front of the truck so much brighter.
- [James] We can see.
- Yeah, we can see, it's totally usable,
and honestly, the light pattern in like our near vicinity
is way smoother.
- [James] This is a stark difference in the brightness.
- [Zack] $1,500 better?
- [James] I don't know.
- [Zack] Thousand dollars better?
This is one of those spots where, if I'm honest,
this is it, man.
- So, Nolan, does more expensive mean more better?
(Nolan laughs)
Why are you thinking so hard?
What is there to think about?
- HiLiTES set up is very cool, obviously better, yes.
- Obviously, obviously, yeah, based on set up.
- [Nolan] but it's so much, so much money.
- I'm gonna say, more expensive is 100% worth it.
- I think-- - Worth it?
- [James] Our KC set up all together was...
$2,000.
(Nolan laughs)
- And... - That's a lot of money.
- [James] Your LED set up was $90.
- [Nolan] Yeah.
- So over 10 times the amount of money,
but I think our lights look cooler,
looks count for a lot in this case.
Even if you're not in the dark,
on a trail using your lights--
- Mm-hm.
- You're still using your lights,
you know what I mean, on the road.
- [Nolan] Mm-hm.
- [James] Your lights don't suck at night.
- They do not, they are very effective.
- It lit up the road in front of you,
nowhere near as far in front of you--
- [Nolan] And not with as much clarity.
- [James] Yeah.
- It's like when we first got to our testing site
and we turned on our lights, I was like,
"Oh, that's the KC's?
This is like the same."
But as the light stayed on for longer, it's hard to explain,
especially if you weren't there, man.
But like, it really felt more real,
the light coming off of high truck,
it's sounds crazy, but it's true.
Also big drawback of our light set up,
we could not turn on our spotlight separate
from our running lights on our bumper, unfortunately.
That's, I would say a big drawback,
you're just getting all the light all at once.
- All the light going everywhere all at once.
- Whereas you could be very selective with your lights,
which I am envious of.
- [James] Every single light in our setup is modular.
Sure, I bought all those lights,
but if I wanna run two of them tomorrow,
I can take the other ones off,
whereas yours is sort of like set it and forget it.
- That's right, yeah.
- So I think, 100%, I think that KC Lights are worth it,
more expensive is better.
- As much as it pains me to say, as low team, as a low boy,
and someone who doesn't have $2,000 to spend on lights,
I'm with you.
- [James] Yeah.
- [Nolan] I think the looks alone justify it,
that KC logo is iconic.
- That being said,
if you are a guy who wants to just get out
and drive at night, for some reason.
- Yeah.
- Away from other people, no questions asked,
I don't wanna know, okay?
I don't wanna know, but you can definitely get away
with spending less than a hundred bucks,
and that's really, really impressive.
- I see why people buy this stuff.
- But you probably are a criminal.
Thank you guys so much for watching
this season of HiLow and supporting us.
- If you're a Donut Media freak and you want more,
check out the join button down below,
you'll have access to the Donut Underground
where you'll get director's cuts of these episodes,
where some of our more--
- Some of my best bits, okay? - Some of bets bits.
- Some of the funniest stuff I said all season.
- You also get access to our members only Discord channel
where James and I hop in from time to time.
You also get access to exclusive behind the scenes videos
that kind of fill in the gaps of our...
- Guys, everything doesn't make sense for the main channel,
it's really fun and you guys should check it out.
I love you.
- Be kind, see you next time.
- See you next time.
(Nolan laughing)