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[Apologies if this is posted in the wrong location]
As it happens, I am now the proud owner of a rolled 1986 C4 convertible. It still runs and drives, but has incurred a moderate amount of body damage including the driver's side A-pillar and doors. It seems to me that the car really may not be worth fixing back to street quality, but will make an excellent parts car. However, in my pondering the predicament, it occurred to me that since all the fenders have been beaten up by boulders it might be a great opportunity to try cutting out the fender wells and putting truck tires on the car. Events like the Gambler 500 come to mind.
I fully understand that this is sacrilegious, but it feels like a worthy project for a corvette that would otherwise be totaled. It can then live on as my mobility buggy around the plant where I work, or as a donor car for my next daily driver corvette.
Has anyone here experimented with building a dirt road vette? If so, what did you learn? Where would be some good places to go for information?
Last edited by OsmiumTetroxide; May 11, 2026 at 06:42 PM.
Reason: Worried this may have been posted in the wrong forum.
Perhaps a Vette Cart would make more sense, those big tires are force multipliers on a delicate suspension. There are a few C4's in scca rally racing, someone entered and won the rear wheel drive category a few years ago, 17" snow tires nothing big.
I think you might be correct about that. Although, I figured that bigger tires would minimize the shock from rougher roads flowing under the wheels, but when it comes to hard turns they would magnify the side loading on the suspension parts.
I have spoken to one man who put 33" tires on the rear of his C4 build, but I think it may have involved a 1" lift in order to do so. I'm not really sure how to go about doing that.
Are you a good fabricator? Welding, cutting, making things work? If not, this ain't the projector you without deep pockets.
At a minimum you'd probably be looking at custom fabricated coilovers to get the necessary ride height. You'd need something to resolve the drive line angle issues. I suspect you'd want custom control arms to push the spindles further out in the wheels wells to avoid contact under travel.
Truth be told, it many ways it might be easier to just graft a C4 body and chassis onto an existing truck frame. Over the years I have seen a few builds like this, but never dug into exactly how they did it.
Offroad/Dakar C4 Builds?
