Someone Turned a Can-am XMR 1000 Into a Pontoon Boat!

If you don’t know by now, here at Speed Society, we love seeing folks thinking outside the box. From unusual engine swaps to crazy paint jobs and everything in between, we like to see those people willing to do something nobody else has done.

This guy is clearly right at home outside the box. He took his big Can-Am XMR 1000 quad and set about making it into a boat. When I read the title of this video, I assumed he maybe took the engine out of his quad and used it to power a pontoon boat, or transformed the chassis into some kind of jet ski-type contraption with pontoons to aid in floatation. But no, he quite literally took his four wheeler and turned it into a pontoon boat, and it’s surprisingly functional.

When the video opened, I was completely skeptical that this thing would float at all. I’m not sure exactly how much an XMR 1000 weighs, but these are not small, lightweight quads. They’re built for rugged terrain and are very well built, which tends to add up to a lot of heft. Seeing these relatively small pontoons, I expected the quad to basically continue to drive along the bottom while the pontoons failed to keep it atop the water.

And once again, I was wrong. Apparently this guy did his homework and knew how much pontoon he needed to float his four wheeler. Once he’s in the water, it looks like he shifts the transmission into natural and uses the PTO, which now has a propeller attached to the rear, to power the rig through the water. There’s a simple rudder for steering and with a simple push or pull, he’s able to turn easily and with a great deal of control.

This is definitely an ingenious way to build your own boat, and the whole setup appears to be bolted on so the quad itself should still be completely useable in the woods as intended and then taken into the lake for a day on the water by tightening up a few bolts. Now that’s what we call outside the box!