Sawblade Wheels On A Corvette Is The Best Way To Carve Up The Ice Caps
Everybody's so creative these days. There are people out there making their kei trucks run on abandoned railways, builders creating underground garages and this: a budding mechanic who decided that the best way to make his Corvette drive on ice was to fit sawblades instead of wheels.
Rather worryingly, sawblade wheels aren't something new. In fact, earlier this year we documented a YouTube creator who had fitted them to his dirt bike and shredded up a frozen lake. Now, fellow digital personality Westen Champlin went one better, fitting four massive sawblades to a C5 Corvette.
Champlin runs a pretty wild YouTube channel filled with fun builds and challenges, including a mini camper creation and a 1,500-horsepower Mustang creation. His latest build is more of the same, albeit with even more risk of losing a limb in the process.
How did they fit the sawblades?
That project was to replace the wheels on a C5 Corvette with a set of enormous saw blades, as you do. It turns out that actually fitting the blades onto the aging Corvette wasn't a very big task, and Champlin simply loosen the five bolts holding the normal wheels and tires in place, pull off the old ones and slot the saw blades on.
Rinse and repeat that process a further three times and there you have it, a Corvette with saw blades instead of wheels. I'm still not 100 percent sure on the purpose of this, but it looks wild.
What's even more mad is the sound the car makes when it's driving on tarmac. The rumble of the V8 under the hood is pierced by the clink of metal on stone as each tooth on the blades connects with the road below. It's jarring, and I'm not sure I'm a fan.
Do they work on ice?
Thankfully, these wheels weren't put on for a long cruise down the highway. Instead, they were installed to rip it on an ice cap. Or a frozen lake, which is probably the next best thing in the Contiguous United States.
At first, there are a few slips and slides while the blades struggle for traction, and at one pint it even sticks in place and starts sawing through the frozen lake. Not good. Once moving freely and on the solid ice, though, the Corvette really rips.
With a little push from a snowplow, the sawblade Corvette dances over the ice, kicking up enormous snowy rooster tails in the process. Heck, it even does a fair job at turning – but maybe don't take this on a frozen rally stage anytime soon.
Should I try this at home?
It might not be a useful test, but it certainly is a successful test and it looks like an awful lot of fun. That doesn't mean you should rip your winter tires off the rims at the first sign of frost in your area, however.
The wear and tear on saw blades will surely mean the longevity of these wheels isn't a patch on proper winter tires, and there's probably a law somewhere that says you can't do your grocery run in a car riding on sawblades.
Still, it's great that ridiculous builds like this exist and, if you want more wild snow builds to enjoy then we've got you covered. Over here, you'll find a Miata that's built up with tracks from a snowmobile, and here is an old Chevvy van on skis.