300 hour service
 

So I routinely (every 50 hours) change my transmission fluid, oil, and filter. I pulled the boat out of storage and noticed that I have close to 300 hours on it so I called my dealer to see if there is anything that needs to be done at 300 hours. Basically he told me that the boat needs to be hooked up to the computer, alignment needs to be checked, and a valve needs to be replaced. My question is this, is this service really necessary? I figured that if I did go ahead with this, it would set me back a few hundred dollars and before I did this I wanted to get your guy's opinion and see if this is really necessary!

Chris

What valve needs to be replaced? I would have the shaft alignment checked if you can't do it your self.

Not sure about the valve, the only other thing I can think is the fuel filter but I've already changed that. How can you check the shaft alignment yourself?

There is a thread on here about shaft alignmet. I posted a link that will tell you how. I guess he could have ment pcv valve. A sevice manual should tell you what is needed.

I will check for that thread. I have checked my manual and it has noting in regards to a 300 hour service. Aaron, do you boat on Lake Cumberland

No Sir. We ride the San Bernard River. It's about an hour out side of Houston TX.

Indmar recommend that you replace the PCV @ 300hrs, alot of dealers do this every year as it is a pretty cheap item. They also recommend that the spark plugs are replace at around 300hrs but otherwise it is another 100/yearly service (provided it is a raw water cooled engine). As to value for money that comes down to you as at the end of the day you end up paying the $$$$ ...
1st of all you have to weigh up your experience/skills compared to someone that maybe working on this brand/model every day and knows what can go wrong with them and should be able to spot things that will prevent you getting the tow of shame or worse the major failure that was preventable such as a shaft alignment that can lead to bearing failures later.

2nd of all you need to consider the insider information that the dealer mechanic has access to. The dealership for a brand has access to a number of service advisories and recalls that are not publically available and that you will never know about. These are provided to assist the dealer in getting the most reliability out of a boat. I have personally seen boats taken into marine workshops with a "known problem" but because the mechanic didn't have access to that particular brands advisories fixed the problem with a part. but it would have cost the customer twice as much and the fault re-occurred 2 months later because the part replaced was not the root-cause of the problem.

In my humble opinion I would recommend that you take your boat into your dealer mechanic at least once a year for a check and do the other services yourself if you have the confidence to do them.

BTW just so you know I am from New Zealand, am a authorized service tech for PCM and Indmar marine engines and have access to their service advisories/recalls.

Ian, thanks for the help! It makes sense to take it in. I was planning on doing new plugs and wires this year anyways but if I take it in I will just have them do this as well. I don't mind paying the money I just get a little leery about service shops. I do all the work and am confident in my abilities but I just like the re-assurance of knowing that the boat has been looked at by a professional. Obviously, the currency rates differ but what are your charges for this service?
chris

Ian should be able to walk you right through it. It's not hard to do. At the same time you should do what ever makes you most comfortable. A few hundred bones is nothing compared to your over all investment. The only thing I would have the dealer do is the alignment and ecm scan. I think most shops are 90 + per hour. Save your self the cash on the stuff you know how to do.

A straight 300 hour service without any issues would be between $600 - $700 USD for Indmar powered boats but there are a few things to consider, my parts bill is inflated due to freight and import duties while my labour rate is a lot lower as I have very low overheads compared to some of the boat dealers as I don't support flash showrooms and only have a workshop to pay for.

Sorry did the conversion backwards should have been $300 - $400

here is the chart

Thanks guys for the input, Ian you scared the hell out of me with that first figure....second one sounds much better. Justin, thanks for the chart. Guess I will just bite the bullet and have it done

Chris

What about the prop? Did anyone see in Wakeboard magazine where it said you should replace your prop every 100 hrs? They are so dang expensive, I hope not.

Kathleen - no, you don't need to change your prop unless you damage it.

Notice who is paying for advertisments in any magazine; that money can influence the content of the articles, too.

Changing the prop every hundred hours would be a little ridiculous and expensive

This is common, and it sucks. All service bulletins should be available to consumers. I own the damn thing. I shouldn't have to go to a dealer for anything if I choose not to. Indmar does great marinizations, but is one of the worst I've seen for tech support. They don't even publish a real service manual!!

http://www.righttorepair.org/

they have a service manual

Source? I've never found one, but I gave up looking about 5 yrs ago.

I posted a link to their manul in a post above.

Dealers are not going to be able to sell manauls very soon

its not the dealer its the manufacture!!

if your lookin for a engine manual, like how to rebuild it, those are tough
but the EFI manual is very easy to get

You can use a regular manual for small block chevy's/fords. Some of the parts will differ of course but torque specs will be the same, Such as Mains,rods,heads etc. Any other small items that are not in there you could get from you service dept.

If you're talking about this manual, that's not a shop manual. I'm mainly interested in the EFI / PCM. I can handle everything else myself. I don't have a check engine light, and would like to hook one up and be able read trouble codes, test sensor impedances, etc.

nope, thats operators manual

you will need the 600 program to read codes and clear them

Thanks so much for the PM's and help, JUST-IN-TIME!!

thanks man have a great season