(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.
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of keeping your car happy and healthy.
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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.
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!