$3000 Car Challenge (Part 1)

Behind us are three American-badged budget cars that we bought for under $3,000, and we'll be driving them from coast to coast in Donut's first-ever Shaped Car Challenge. Hey! Whoa! Oh! Oh my God! That's badass! Oh! No way! So, over the next eight weeks, we're gonna divide into three teams, drive across the country, modify these cars, and compete head-to-head in different events to see if it's possible to experience everything American motorsport has to offer with just one budget build. Come on, baby! Come on! Let's go! And time! Welcome to the big trip. Quick, grab your s**t! Get in here, we're in this to win this bit. Let's go! Later, nerds! All right, we're officially on the road, Jimmy. We're on our way to the hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. Extremely hot. Probably the hottest place on Earth. The plan is to take our cheap cars short-course racing outside Las Vegas. But first, we've gotta survive the extreme environment of Death Valley. My phone weather app is saying 105, and what's crazy is we're not even there yet. Yeah, we're not even there yet. All the GoPros and the cameras are overheating right now. I just read this news article, and now I'm a little concerned. Death Valley tourist skin melts off after walking on scorching hot sand. Oh my God. We bought these cars with no idea what kinds of motorsports we'll be competing in on our trip. I chose this 1999 Chevy Tracker. It's got a four-cylinder engine making 127 horsepower, it's got four-wheel drive, and it only cost me $2,600. I'm not gonna lie, folks, I think I overpaid. Strengths of the Tracker. Four-wheel drive, AC, lots of space in the back for our luggage. Definitely. Downsides, I don't think the engine is that powerful. If we come across any high-speed challenges, we're gonna be at a serious disadvantage. When we fired it up this morning, I did see some black ooze coming out of the rear. I don't know what that is. Possibly some soot? And Jimmy bought this 2004 Ford Focus SVT. This was the performance version of the regular Focus, meaning it came with 60 more horsepower, a six-speed manual, and much stiffer suspension. We got this for the low, low price of $3,000. Jimmy's really good at haggling. So this car, it's a super sporty little hot hatch. When we get to pavement motorsport stuff, it'll be really good. Are you nervous about anything? I'm a little nervous. This is what you would call a performance vehicle. These desert environments, it might not play to our benefit. Yeah, I think as long as we keep it cool. We have the only manual car out of the three. Yeah, but also the only one without four-wheel drive capability. Yes, but you don't need four-wheel drive to go everywhere. And I picked this good old-fashioned Dodge Ram 1500 with a 5.9 Magnum V8 and four-wheel drive, all for a total price of $2,700. The steering is like low-key pretty floaty on this thing. Pretty sure probably every pushing is below. It has a random oil pressure light that will come on, but I keep an eye on my actual oil pressure gauge. My oil pressure isn't horrible. See, at least we have AC. Isn't that kind of ******* lit? I think the AC might not make a difference in Dead Valley. I don't know if I'm being real. Avoid overheating. Turn off AC for the next 15 miles. Shit, okay. Going down to one. I'm sorry. We got to preserve ourselves. Oh, big dip. I didn't think it would be that big. Oh, it's already hot, dude. We've turned our AC off. Taking the advice of the sign. It's going to be a little sauna. Do you want to see what happens if we turn the AC on? I don't even want to try it. Okay, okay. I don't know, man. Impossible. So this is it. This is Dead Valley, Jimmy. Wow, it's beautiful. Beautiful by far. Does it hurt? Yeah, it hurts a lot right now. Shit, that's sick. Oh my god, dude. What? You guys have any idea where Tristan and Steph are at? All right, y'all. So we pulled over for an unspecified reason and we're stuck. What? No, we haven't even made it to the first slide. I got it stuck. No. Pulled over in some very loose sand. Now it's time to get ourselves out. Luckily, we do have a capable production vehicle here. Go for it, Danny. Woo! Easy! Stop one. First hotel, handled Death Valley like a champ. Yeah. We're going to hit the pool while Heber does that with the old tracker. Yeah, that part's fun. Yeah, we're chilling. We made it here to beautiful Furnace Creek. It's the hottest place in the world. I'm not going to lie, the engine was starting to cook a little bit. So we put the heaters on to recirculate that air. Rolled the windows down and that helped a good bit. But it was a little bit worrisome. And it's also making a ton, like a cacophony of weird noises. What the hell? Sounds like transformers. But the fact that it made it here and it's hot as it is. Now that we've all arrived in Death Valley, it's time for our first big trip challenge. Here's the task. This is a land of extremes and there are six waypoints throughout Death Valley where we need to take our cars. From Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America, to Furnace Creek, where the highest temperature on earth was recorded. Each team will need to take a photo of their car at every waypoint to complete the challenge. Every team that survives will have no points deducted at the end of the video. Some people just know they could save hundreds on car insurance by checking Allstate first. Like you know, to check for rust first before buying a used car. That's clean, dude. Yeah, yeah, she's pretty good. Clean title, 35,000 miles, and street legal. Yes, yes. When it's a yes, it is a yes, dude. Take my money, please. Thank you. Checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. Bro, it's all rust. No takesie-backsies, okay? I already spent the money. You're in good hands with Allstate. The obstacle we're going to tackle first is Dante's View. It's the furthest one from here. Also, I feel like later in the day it's going to be pretty hot. So I want to get that out of the way. And then we'll tackle all the other ones, which are in pretty close proximity. We'll meet up with the team at Furnace Creek. So we're skipping everything else right now. We just want to get over with kind of our main challenge of our car, which was, you know, the car getting really hot due to just climbing and climbing and climbing. Dante's View tends to be used as a final stress test for most automobile manufacturers. All right. Support vehicles told us that we've got some smoke coming out of the tailpipe when we accelerate. Keep an eye on that oil. Another reason I'm glad we're going Dante's View first. Oh, Jesus. Okay. It's starting to get pretty steep, dude. Oh, here we go. Oh, this is where it begins. This is steep. Okay. So the last time we said it was a climb. No, no, no. Now it's a climb. This is the climb. Here we go. Yeah. We're going to hit our first task, which is Mustard Canyon. I think we're going to turn up here. Get out. Here. Selfie. Selfie mode. All right. Back in the car. Let's go. Let's get out of here. Did I see Jimmy? Mustard Canyon. Got it? Yep. I got a picture of it. We made it to 20 Mule Team Canyon. This is where those beautiful borax mules pulled that borax. It's actually pretty neat, but we got to go. We're in a very, very hot biome right now. This is a big vehicle, you know. So I was needing to ride the brakes a little bit. I did start getting a whiff for those brakes though. I don't like that meat personally. It does not smell nice. It's quite scary. Your brake fluid actually has a boiling point. That's why there is specific brake fluid for racing applications, because it has a higher boiling point than normal OEM brake fluid. But I think we're coming up at a section where we're kind of good. 20 Mule Team Canyon. Oh yeah. We did it. Go, go. Click your heels. All right. Next, Dante's Peak. Dante's Peak. Oh my god. Dante's view. We've made it. Oh, look at this, dude. Come on over here. Oh, wow. You smell that? That smells strongly of oil. We did see a bunch of smoke on this thing. And obviously our engine is getting hot. You can see that it's kind of leaking along the side of the valve cover and landing on the exhaust. So that's going to cause a lot of billowing of smoke. We're going to let this thing cool down. I'm a little worried for the teams that aren't here. Because the longer they wait, the hotter it's going to get. Come on, buddy. This is, uh... Don't let the hill start kill you. Here, I got you. You got it? Ready? Start it back up. Oh, that does not smell good. Okay. Having to drop down to first is pretty serious. Yeah. I mean, you got a lot of RPMs you can do, by the way. It will have more power than those higher RPMs, too. Oh, look who it is. Great view. Hey, Jimmy. Yeah. We should go. Let's take a photo. I already did. Oh. They're taking it serious. They're taking this race seriously. I'm kind of not. You may want to just double-check for now. Yeah. What are we double-checking? Oh, ****! What? Don't tell me that. What? Turn around. Turn this bitch around. We missed it, huh? We missed it. Oh, my God. Damn it! ****! **** you! Ah, Jimmy! But that's fine. As long as it's just Jimmy ahead of us and not Nolan. Looking good. Looking like it was. Oh, my God! Let's not break that. Oh, my God. The handle just broke. I can't believe that, Justin. I cannot believe that right now. How did that happen? It's like another world out here, dude. This is Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the United States. Jimmy. That's in the salt flat. All right. Right now, our brakes are beginning to fade. It's okay. We're just going to put it in first, and we're going to use it. And smell it, too. It stinks of brakes. Take the picture! Wait! Where are we? She's blocking us. Can't believe you. Dirty tactics. Get in, bro! Wasn't that low-key genius of me? Come on, Focus. But if Jimmy's right there, then where's Nolan? I see why it's called Mustard, though. With yellows. Yellow? Okay. Oh, my God. He's on us! That little yellow car. He's flashing his high beams. I know he is! All right. 12 miles of this. Uh-oh. Oh, ----. I think we're going to lose this challenge, ever. That was both of them. Oh, shoot. We need to stop right here. Artist's palette. Take the picture! Get past him! Go, go, go, go! You got it. All right, so now our finish line is Furnace Creek. Furnace Creek, also known as the Devil's Bathhouse. How much closer? This is it. This is it now? Yeah. Take the picture! Close the door! We did it! We're not last, and that's all that matters. That's all that matters. Dude, that was a great drive. That was fun, dude. We made it. Yeah! This has been really fun in Death Valley, and to just, you know, make this a memorable moment for all of us. Each team, I got a present. Oh, thank you. Dude. Oh, it's so giant. Yeah. We can throw that on our cars. All right, let's go to Vegas now. We made it out of Death Valley. We're in Vegas. We're gonna gamble and eat sushi tonight. Yeah! Now that we finished our first big trip challenge, it's time to modify our vehicles for the main event, the short course off-road race. We're at Retro Deluxe Garage. We're about to turn these cars from their stock form into some desert racing beasts on a budget. Let's check it out. I love the shop. Very cool vibe in here. For each motorsport we'll tackle on the big trip, we'll be upgrading our cars, but each team has a limited budget of only $5,000 to spread out over eight motorsports. So we'll all need to be very strategic about what we purchase and why. Oh, Steph, that's perfect. You like that? Oh my god. Okay, y'all, for our build, we went ahead and got upgraded steering, as well as some wheels and tires, and all of that cost us a little over $2,000. So we're going to start off by removing all of our steering components. It's hot as hell in here and we're starting to feel it, but once these are off, we'll go ahead and install all of our new steering components and figure out the rest as we go. So we pulled the dusty old steering linkage out of the car, but we pulled it out all in one piece so we can copy all the measurements for the alignment and have our tow set where we need it. Let's see our stabilizers. A steering stabilizer is basically dampening the road vibration before it comes up to the steering wheel. So as you're driving, much like a real shock on a car, this is doing the exact same thing, just horizontally with your tires. That way you don't feel every little rock and dip you get into. We also picked up these sway bar end links. The purpose of the sway bar is to reduce body roll in your car or truck, and we definitely need that because this is a big heavy beast. Oh my goodness. I'm confused. I think this is how it goes. Finger tight, just let it sink into there. There we go. Hell yeah, dude. Oh man, this is going together so great. This is awesome. Some people say, oh, I'm all about my project. I'm in there. Not like Tristan. Tristan's in there like swimwear. Look at him. Oh. Just like that, this sucker's in. I just need to cool down a little bit. My goodness. For the focus, we got wheels, tires, and suspension for around $1,900. And to complete the rally car look, we got some mud flaps as well. Falling on a budget, you know? We got some strut lifts here. This is a basic way to lift a car. This is an inch and a quarter. This goes on top of the shock. This goes under a spring. There's a shock. OEM stuff is a safe bet. These extended studs will allow it to thread into the shock tower. No problem there. And we're going to start here in the back because the back is always the easiest part whenever you're installing suspension. The shocks in this car have never been changed before because I just tore this foam. This is OEM foam that covers the top of the shock. We're on the original suspension from 2004. There we go. Right up here on the top of the spring perch is a rubber bushing. And I believe our new one goes up top there. Look at this hefty spring bushing. Use that man strength. Oh my god, you know I don't have any of that. Pull the old springs out. Pull the old shock out. Put the old spring back in with the new perch that was much thicker than the stock perch. Got us a nice two foot stack up here. I'd say we gained at least two inches. That's a pretty significant height clearance for the rear here. So now we're on the front. I have to remove this entire front strut because I no longer need it. I have a full replacement. And then I'll add on our strut tower lift onto the new strut. Here we go. It did not hold it. Those threads are non-existent though. Well, I guess we're going to put spacers on one. This is going to be so janky. But hey, I mean, $3,000 car, right? I mean, look, I really don't recommend doing that. I know people are going to flame us in the comments for doing this. But I mean, it doesn't have to be in the edit. Oh, this is going in the edit, dude. You kidding me? For the Chevy Trucker, we got some tires. And we got a skid plate. And that's it. All for under 800 bucks. Solid construction. Yeah, I found this on eBay. Car actually comes with skid plates already. At least under the engine bay. This is a two-piece system. So there's this guy in the front and then another plate behind it. Takes care of the transmission and the engine. Whereas right now, it's just the engine. Over in Death Valley, the car felt pretty good. The only thing that I would like to improve, I guess, from a comfort standpoint, is the air conditioning. In addition to our mods here, we're going to go through the car. Make sure that, you know, the cabin air filters aren't like totally jammed up. Yeah, that's the problem. So we just took out our cabin air filter. We have a little bit of AC problems. As you can see, this whole swamp just fell out of it. And that's one of two. Here's the other one. Okay. Oh my god. Okay, yeah. That might be explaining why we had some airflow issues. It's never been cleaned. Ever. That's a wet, slimy subframe bolt. We should maybe investigate what's going on under there. There's no reason why that should be slimy. It's dry up here. Well, let's keep going. It's fine. This skid plate's looking really good. I actually really love the design without the holes and everything. I'm confident that if we ever get in a sort of like rock crawling scenario, you know, we won't get caught up on rocks on here since this is one smooth piece. So you might be wondering why we're smoking back in Death Valley. Well, Hever has deduced that the valve cover gasket here is not in good shape. It's leaking oil from underneath the valve cover here. We can actually see a little bit of a residue down here. And we think that some of the oil maybe got down onto the exhaust header there and started smoking. So unfortunate, yes, but also this car has a ton of miles on it. It was 2400 bucks. And if that's the only real issue we have, we're just going to keep an eye on the oil and keep on chugging along. I want to see how far we can take this thing without making major mechanical fixes. I think it's fun. And also like that's just part of having an old car. I think you have leaky valve covers, whatever, you know. Okay, Hever, I'm firing it up. Go for it. That's normal. That took a suspicious amount of time, Hever. Just a ronny baloney. Look at this. We picked up these steel wheels, which are stronger than aluminum. They bend instead of cracking. On top of these things looking badass, they have a negative 12 offset, which lets them poke out from the truck. That's going to increase our track width. That's going to lower our center of gravity. It's going to look awesome. To go with it, we have these big old Dynapro 82 Extremes. These are a 35-inch tire, which is going to help us when we have to be in those off-road conditions. We really could have used these when we got stuck on the side of the road. Probably could have helped. Dude, this is going to totally change the look of the truck. Beautiful. It looks like this is what it was supposed to look like originally. This thing looks like a murder machine. Yeah, no, totally. And the tires make it look so much more menacing. One of the first mods you're going to want to do is get a nice chunky tire like this. It's got a nice deep tread to it. I definitely think that this will inspire more confidence in our driving. Tires are what touch the road or surface, and they are the fastest way to raise the ceiling of the performance of your car. When you're going to go do some budget rallying, it's a good hack to go get some much more sidewall, but in turn, we have to lose wheel size. Yeah, so we're dropping down to a 15-inch wheel. These are some OZ Rally Racing wheels. Look at how cool these are. These are super period-esque. Yeah, those have seen some races. Let's get to work. What's up, guys? We wanted to let you know that we are relaunching the Donut Media website with all new merch, new colors, new logo styles. Look at this giant wrench. Look at this giant dog. So make sure you go check it out. All new Donut stuff coming to you right now. We got our line marked down from our white paint on these wheels, and I'm going to start sanding it down. If my mom saw me doing this, she would flip out. When I was starting out in my home garage, she would be like, whatever you're doing, don't touch the brakes. And here I am shaving brakes. This is it. Dude, that was intense. Thanks, Doug. Colin McRae would be really proud right now. We did it, brother. All right, let's see what our teammates think. Wow. How to steal your style for less money. Hey, hey, these are bad van GTs, OK? Oh, yeah. Got some decent ground clearance under here now. I mean, that's at least a foot. Jason's paying the key in the ignition. He's going to turn key on, engine off. And then he's going to go ahead and just start turning that wheel back and forth, making sure that we're not rubbing anywhere. What? Come here. Huh? Look how stupid this is. What? Look at the wheel. ------- so dumb. This ain't like a little bit off. This is upside down. How many times did I say, is the steering wheel straight? I said, Tristan, is the steering wheel straight? And you said, check. And I said, ass heart. What the ****? It's both of our faults. We were both negligent. It's OK. None of it actually matters. It's going to go to my head. As long as it can rotate all the way to the left and all the way to the right, that's all that matters, bro. All right, now that all the cars are done. Let's go short course racing. Las Vegas is the birthplace of desert racing in America. In order to drum up publicity for their annual deer hunt, the Mint Hotel held an off-road race in 1968. As the event quickly grew in popularity, the Mint 400, as it became known, gained a reputation as one of the toughest races in North America. Motorsport legend Mickey Thompson wanted to bring desert racing to the masses and brought these mighty machines to short, easily viewable courses, where the racing action was more accessible for paying audiences. Short course racing was born, and we're going to get a little taste of it right now in our sub $3,000 cars. We made it to our short course. We are just about to race these fine machines. But before we get to that, let's break down the rules. Winner will get six points. Second place, five points. Third place, four points. And if you happen to DNF on our single lap we're running on this track, you will get no points. And since all of us completed the challenge back in Death Valley, no points will be deducted from our total scores. Of course, here is the oval configuration with an outer ring and inner ring. You'll do one lap around the outer and then come back inside. There's a lot of whoops. There's some sharp turns. There's a big berm and a big tabletop in the middle there. High speed sections, low speed sections. It's going to put these cars to the test. Let's get started. Team Tracker, we're going first. Car's in four-wheel drive. We got power mode on. Power mode's on. And overdrive off. Overdrive is off. All right, Nolan. Three, two, one. Yeah. Very non-aggressive start by Nolan. But I do believe he is in four-wheel drive. He said he was going to try that. Oh yeah, a little bit of understeer. Yeah. There you go, there you go. Big whoop, big whoop. Oh, the rear shocks are blowing out. Whoa, ----. Very good. Yeah, Nolan. Dude, that was awesome. That was very aggressive. Good job, Nolan. You got a 105. 105. Good. Heart's pumping a little bit. All right, let's go see how the Ram team does. Oh, she's looking way more committed. She's also going very wide because of that four-wheel drive. That's right. Swing it out. Good. Speed. Okay. We went in neutral again. We got it, we got it, we got it. Calm, calm. Good. We're rubbing right there so she don't like that. Yep, it's okay. Good. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Foot to the floor. There it is. Finally, it decides to shift. Yes. Brake, brake, brake, brake, brake. Oh, yeah. Some pretty gnarly bumps on the run-up. All right. We're good. Our time is one minute, 15 seconds, and 91. Once we did that big jump, it threw me into neutral. Yeah, we heard that. We heard it. Yeah. But also, we saw you. Get down, get down. Whoa. Oh, my God. We're good. If Jimmy and I place in between these 10 seconds, we're second place. So you want to try and beat Nolan, or are you going to play it safe? I think we got to try and beat Nolan. All right. I mean, I don't know how. I want to see what that thing can do. That's hopes and dreams, but... I'm more excited about watching that thing go fast than winning, honestly. I want to see it. That's very true, yeah. Three, two, one, go. Oh, ----. Burnout. Here we go. Oh, my God, I'm so nervous. Good commitment, go. Come on, Jimbo. Let's go, buddy. Good, go. Slow, slow, slow. Okay, okay, here we go. Here we go, here we go. Yeah, boy. Got it, yeah. You're ready to cut, right? Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Reverb out, give him a second, go. Come on, baby. Come on, let's go. Don't look at it. I don't know what we did. I don't know what we did, but... I mean, you lifted before the finish, but other than that, good job, buddy. That was very controlled. Very controlled. Jimmy, Justin. Oh, Jimmy. This car is fun. She ripped. No, my lip. Your lip's looking a little busted there, buddy. It's okay, it's okay. That's okay, that's okay. She's rally bred now. All right. Yeah. Heber, what is the time? All right, time is... 1. 07. Oh! That's so close. So close. That's so close. In third place, Ram Team with four points. We're on the board. Team Focus with five points. Team Tracker, six points. And since we all completed the challenge in Death Valley, no deductions there. So there are your rankings, but we have so many more stops to go. We are just getting started with the big trip. Next time, we're going to Utah. That's right. So hit that subscribe button so you don't miss the next episode of The Big Trip. We'll see you then. Where's Utah? Is it that way? No, that's all the North Star. Come on. North Star's right there. It's a big cloud. There's no star out right now. All right.