YouTuber Building an Off-road Challenger Hellcat 4×4 Because Why Not?
Since everything else has been done many times over by now, why not build an off-road Challenger with four-wheel-drive?
By now, just about everything we can imagine has been done to the Charger and Challenger Hellcat. After years on the market, these cars have been drag raced a million times over, built to the max, and even fitted with a set of horse and buggy wheels. But while we’ve seen some renderings of an off-road Challenger Hellcat or two, we haven’t seen someone build a real, honest-to-goodness 4×4 version of the modern hot rod, until now.
That’s because YouTuber Westen Champlin, who has overseen quite a few crazy builds including a diesel Mustang on his channel in recent months, just picked up a 2018 Challenger Hellcat for that exact purpose. His plans are quite simple – to turn it into a proper, four-wheel-drive, big-tired, mud-slinging, trail-dominating off-road Challenger Hellcat that’s capable of hanging with Jeeps and of course, attracting views and clicks.
Problem is, this project doesn’t exactly get off on the right foot. Once the car is back at Champlin’s shop, he and his crew discover why it was so cheap in the first place. “We’ve got to figure out what’s wrong with our Hellcat because it’s only got one gear and it’s only got one speed,” Champlin said. “And it’s not good at anything else.”
Once it’s off the trailer and up on the lift, Champlin notices that there’s fluid leaking from the transmission’s rear seal, which is thankfully caused by a loose fill plug. Unfortunately, the clutch is also gone, and when he spins the input shaft, the tail shaft doesn’t move. Champlin goes to order the parts he needs to fix all of these things, but then runs into yet another problem – they’re on a four-month backorder.
Regardless of this little roadblock and the obvious problems associated with his off-road Challenger Hellcat build in general, Champlin sounds confident that he’ll get it done, however. “Can we make the four-wheel-drive swap and everything work with the Hellcat engine? Of course, we can,” Champlin says. “We’ve done more with less. Or we’ve done less with more. No, we’ve done more with less, that’s how it goes.” Judging from his wild and wacky, yet fully functioning past projects, we have no reason to doubt it.
Join the Dodge Forums now!
