Honda’s original Pilot FL400R left the factory with 35 horsepower and a straightforward mission: carry two people down a trail without drama. Dax Shepard looked at that number and found it deeply unsatisfying — because the machine that showed up at his door runs an 800cc Ski-Doo snowmobile engine producing somewhere between 140 and 150 horsepower, nearly four times the stock output, stuffed into a vintage chassis that was never designed to see anything close to that kind of power.
The Build in Plain Terms
The builder is Corey Kruse, owner of CK Powersports in Nebraska. Kruse sourced a 1990 Honda Pilot ATV — a machine out of production for over three decades — pulled the original 2-stroke engine, and replaced it with a snowmobile powerplant that belongs in an entirely different performance category. The delivery and first ride are documented in the YouTube video Delivering A 140 HP Skidoo Swapped Honda Pilot to Dax Shepard, which provides the closest thing to a public technical record of what was built and how it behaves.
This is worth attention for a specific reason: it is not a rendered concept or a manufacturer press release. It is a fabricated, delivered, and ridden machine with a documented power figure and a named builder. The honest caveat: 140-150 horsepower in a vintage ATV chassis is genuinely exciting and genuinely risky, and those two things coexist without canceling each other out.
What the Honda Pilot FL400R Actually Was
The Honda Pilot FL400R was a side-by-side ATV produced between 1988 and 1990. Stock specifications are modest: a 397cc single-cylinder 2-stroke engine producing approximately 35 horsepower, a two-occupant layout, and a chassis designed for trail riding rather than performance. It was never a speed machine. What it was, however, was mechanically honest — a simple, well-built platform that earned a reputation for structural integrity even if it never earned one for outright power.
Those qualities matter when planning a swap. A chassis that cannot handle fabrication stress or additional drivetrain load is one that fails when you multiply the horsepower running through it. The Pilot’s structure gave Kruse something worth working with. That said, sourcing a clean 1990 Honda Pilot today is its own project. These are vintage machines with limited parts availability and widely varying condition. Donor vehicle quality sets the ceiling on what the finished build can be — which means acquisition cost and thorough inspection are not optional steps.
Understanding the stock baseline also anchors expectations about what this build represents. Going from 35 hp to 140-150 hp is not a performance upgrade in the conventional sense. It is a ground-up reimagination of what the vehicle is. The Honda Pilot name is essentially carried over as a chassis reference at that point — everything else is custom engineering.
The Engine Swap: 800cc Ski-Doo and the Power Number That Matters
CK Powersports replaced the original Honda 2-stroke with an 800cc Ski-Doo snowmobile engine — a 2-stroke powerplant well understood in the powersports world for its high power-to-weight ratio and aggressive, peaky power delivery. Snowmobile engines are tuned for maximum output in short bursts, not for sustained load cycling at moderate throttle. That is an important trade-off: you get enormous power potential, and you accept that maintenance demands and longevity profile differ substantially from a purpose-built ATV or UTV engine.
The completed build produces approximately 140-150 horsepower. Kruse has noted that a naturally aspirated V4 1000cc configuration could theoretically push this platform toward 200 hp — a figure that should give any builder pause when thinking about chassis limits, braking capacity, and suspension tuning. The current 800cc build is already well beyond anything the stock Pilot was engineered to manage.
RideApart’s coverage of the build provides additional context on the machine and its origins for anyone who wants the full backstory alongside the technical details.
Stock vs. Custom: The Numbers Side by Side
This comparison gives you the performance gap in plain terms:
| Specification | Stock Honda Pilot FL400R | Shepard’s Custom Build |
|---|---|---|
| Engine | 397cc single-cylinder 2-stroke | 800cc Ski-Doo 2-stroke (snowmobile) |
| Horsepower | ~35 hp | ~140-150 hp |
| Engine Configuration | Production, single-cylinder | Custom swap, snowmobile-sourced |
| Production Years | 1988-1990 | One-off build |
| Parts Availability | Limited (vintage) | Custom fabricated — nothing off the shelf |
| Warranty | Original manufacturer (long expired) | None |
What the table cannot show: weight distribution changes, suspension tuning requirements at this power level, and drivetrain stress management are all custom engineering solutions unique to this machine. There is no parts shelf for it. Fuel economy and maintenance intervals are effectively irrelevant metrics here — this is a purpose-built machine for the experience of riding, not a trail-touring utility vehicle optimized for efficiency.
Why the Builder Matters More Than the Celebrity
The celebrity angle generates the traffic, but the technical credibility belongs to the fabricator. Corey Kruse and CK Powersports executed a snowmobile-to-vintage-ATV swap at 140-150 horsepower — that places the shop in a narrow category of builders with both the fabrication capability and the engineering judgment to make a project like this work rather than merely exist. Any builder can bolt a powerful engine into a frame. Fewer can tune, integrate, and deliver a machine that is actually rideable at that power level.
Powersports Business covered CK Powersports’ work on this project, and for anyone researching custom ATV fabrication shops capable of high-horsepower swap work, that coverage adds meaningful professional context. The shop is now a named, documented reference point in a space where builder reputation typically travels by word of mouth only.
Shepard’s role also deserves honest framing. Commissioning a one-off build from a Nebraska fabricator is not a PR move — there is no manufacturer partnership, no co-branding, and no promotional angle that makes obvious commercial sense. It is a hobbyist decision made by someone who genuinely cares about powersports. Shepard’s first reaction to the finished machine is documented on CK Powersports’ Facebook page and is worth watching if you want unscripted enthusiasm rather than a polished reveal.
What a Build Like This Realistically Costs
No official price has been published, which is typical for custom fabrication work at this level. If you are trying to benchmark realistic cost — sourcing a viable vintage Honda Pilot, reinforcing and preparing the chassis, integrating and tuning an 800cc snowmobile engine, and delivering a functional machine — you are likely looking at somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000, depending heavily on donor vehicle condition, your regional market for fabrication labor, and how much custom problem-solving the integration demands. Treat that range as an orientation, not a quote.
The custom build market has no MSRP. You are paying for fabrication hours, engineering judgment, and a builder’s demonstrated ability to make it work — none of which scale predictably across shops or projects.
The contrast with production machines is instructive. A Can-Am Maverick R delivers comparable or greater power with full warranty coverage, manufacturer parts support, and years of chassis refinement, at a price point that overlaps with what a serious custom build costs. A Polaris RZR Pro R offers a similar value proposition. Both will substantially outperform the stock Honda Pilot by margins comparable to this build — and both offer something this machine structurally cannot: a dealership network, a parts catalog, and a warranty you can actually use.
Production machines give you refinement, support, and predictability. A custom build like Shepard’s gives you something that exists nowhere else on earth, with maintenance and reliability unknowns baked in as permanent features of ownership. Neither answer is wrong. They are answers to different questions.
What This Build Actually Proves
Honda built the Pilot FL400R in the late 1980s as a modest, practical trail machine. Decades later, a fabricator in Nebraska chose that chassis as the foundation for a 140-150 hp custom build — and it worked. That is a quiet but meaningful endorsement of the original engineering. A chassis that cannot support that level of modification does not get chosen for it by builders who understand the stakes.
The 2-stroke platform also remains the technically rational choice for maximum power-to-weight in off-road applications, both in the original Honda engine and in the Ski-Doo donor unit. Modern production UTVs have largely moved to 4-stroke powerplants for emissions compliance, fuel economy, and low-end torque — but the custom build world has not fully followed, because the power density of a high-performance 2-stroke is genuinely difficult to match at equivalent displacement.
For a buyer or builder, this project is a data point — not a blueprint. The right fabricator, a structurally sound donor chassis, and a clearly defined performance target can produce a machine that no production line will offer. The question worth answering before pursuing anything similar is one Shepard’s build implicitly raises: are you building for the experience of ownership, or for the experience of the ride? The first involves sourcing, fabrication relationships, and ongoing maintenance unknowns. The second is settled in the first thirty seconds at full throttle. Being honest with yourself about which one you actually want matters more than the horsepower number on the spec sheet.