We love seeing crazy no-expense-spared car builds, but things are rather different in the real world where annoying things like mortgages and student loan payments prevent most of us from blowing our entire paycheck on billet wheels, titanium exhausts and race-ready crate engines.

For many car geeks, modifying is about choosing carefully how to spend what little money we do have, and ditching dreams of a fancy crate engine for a tried-and-trusted LS swap using a junkyard motor. But how much difference in power and performance is there between the big-bucks approach and the budget line, anyway? The guys at Donut Media set about V8-swapping a pair of Nissan 350Zs to find out.

The Zs previously featured in a bunch of Donut’s Hi Car, Low Car videos that saw one Nissan get high-priced engine, braking and suspension components, and the other making do with bargain-bin bits. So for this video Hi Car gets $20K’s worth of GM 525 LS 6.2 crate motor, the 525 in the name referring to its potential horsepower, which outs at 532 PS for you metric lovers. The lucky Z also gets a further $10k of bits to make the most of that tasty motor, and, just as importantly, to make fitting it into the space designed for a V6 as simple as possible.

Related: This Pristine 2007 Nissan 350Z Has Only Been Driven 2,138 Miles

Meanwhile the low-car team pulls a cast iron Chevy LQ9/Vortec V8 out of a truck at a junkyard. The salvage motor displaces 6.0 liters and was rated at 345 hp (350 PS) when new, which suggests Low Car is going to be left picking grit out of its radiator grille when the pair make it to the track later.

But things turned out a little more complicated than that. Low Car pushed out 392 hp (397 PS) on the dyno, while Hi Car was ahead with 430 hp (436 PS), but not by as much as you might have guessed given the bigger valves, much wilder cam, extra capacity and colossal price.

We’ll not spoil things by revealing exactly what happened when the two cars battled it out for zero to 60 mph (96 km/h) honors, but suffice it to say that the results might make you think twice about remortgaging your house for that crate motor.