Boat hours?

I know there have been many of these posts before, but I want to revisit this question. My boat has about 75 hours on it. I was sitting her thinking about how many of those hours are the boat sitting there idling. Im going to estimate probably around 25%. So Lets round my number to 100 hours. Comparing th hours with the 25% idling in mind, how many miles does my boat have? Im going to say around 1000 maybe 1500? I dont know how would you really come up with this number?

No definate way. Indmar recommends oil change at 50 hours, if that is equal to 3000 miles then you have about 4500 miles. Boat engines work much harder than auto engines because of the constant work. The critical factor is regular maintenance and care to minimize wear.

I think hours are measured at a certain RPM, so you would have to idle for a few (2-3) hours to have the hour meter measure 1 hour. If you maintain your engine well, you can get 1000-1500 hours on it without any issues. In my experience, other stuff will go wrong long before the engine needs replacing.

BTW, I dont think 50 hours is equal to 3000 miles. I believe the recommended oil change is due to the marine environment more than the degradation of the oil.

As soon as the motor is running the hour meter is running wether you are at 700 RPM's or 4000RPMs. There is NO deduction in time for running at a LOWER RPM

Most boat hour meters count hours the second the key is turned on you dont even have to start the engine for the hours to start counting

"I think hours are measured at a certain RPM, so you would have to idle for a few (2-3) hours to have the hour meter measure 1 hour. If you maintain your engine well, you can get 1000-1500 hours on it without any issues. In my experience, other stuff will go wrong long before the engine needs replacing. "

Wasn't there a guy on here that left his key turned, engine not running and the hour meter ran till the battery ran down.

I have 1000 hrs on my X-30 and I've replaced a water pump and battery.

Ok so I have been giving this some thought. If I think about all the driving I do, Im in sales so here is my day. I drive to different Businesses maybe 10-15 per day. Usually in town hitting the freeway on occcasion. My normal speed would probably be around 35-40. If I just say 40 miles an hour is an average speed that I drive, then at 40 miles an hour, at 1000 miles my boat would have 25 hours on it. At 2000 miles my boat would have 50 miles on it etc.. what do you think about this logic? so at 75 hours which I now have I would be around 3000 miles. This makes fairly good sence to me. Im not sure if there is a true mathematical way to do this but this may be pretty much on target.

hows this, i just went and checked my truck. my 2005 F350 diesel has 38076 miles. and since its a diesel it has an hour meter that reads 1088 hrs. its my daily driver and im just like any other bay area person, freeway, town, lake trips, what ever where ever, i drive it. so you do the math.

Danial - George is right about oil change interval comparison and although I have also thought about Bryan's F350 comparison at the end of the day 75 hrs is about is about 1/2 average years use. When you trade your boat if it has more than 150 hr/year it will appraise less than average. Im gonna say 75 hours is more equivalant to 6,000 to 7,500 miles.

We took our boat into the dealer and they accidently left the key turned on so our boat hours went up considerably. It had 22 hours on it when we brought it in and when we picked it up it had 36 hours on it. They ended up changing out the hour meter for us.

Another way I have thought about this is comparing to rpm in my Suburban. At 3000 rpm (typical wakeboard rpm) it will run 65- 70 up aslight grade when pulling the boat (loaded like a boat) so an hour would be 65 miles under similar conditions to a boat. That would be 3250 miles in 50 hours.

Don't sweat the little sh*t Dano, you're boat is still brand new bro! My Cally is at 440 hours and runnin strong. Werd.....

damn bryan you drive slow

How the heck have you been John? We really need to hook up this summer.

Daniel, if you want to make a really rough guess at how far your boat has actually travelled over the water try this.
Typical boat speed (say 22 mph) times number of hours (75) times Fudge factor (say 66 percent) equals about 1100 miles of real travel.
Hour meters read anytime the ignition is on so the hours are always high and there are usually lots of times your travelling much faster than your typical speed.
This odometer would actually be pretty easy to add into perfect pass because the calculation for them is simple. Maybe we should ask for that.

That might be depressing when you look at average MPG of fuel.

(Message edited by rallyart on January 21, 2007)

Jeff - I can think of one problem with swapping out the hour meter. The ECU for the motor might actually report 10 more hours. I'm guessing they just left it in AUX and the ECU hours didn't increase but you probably want to make sure of that.

since we are on the hours subject...how many hours does a typical boardin' boat put on in a year? i'm looking at buying a '04 Xstar w/ MCX 350 in it. it has about 500 hrs on it. at this point will the hours really effect the resale value when i would want to sell it in probably 2 years? this will be my first boat so i'm not all that familiar with this stuff.

The pulled 350 engines after the hurricane katrina and got them running. My uncle runs a marina and says he has seen 3000 hours on them.