Ive been reading posts on here for about two years now and thought. Its about time I chime in with a question. BEAR WITH ME NOW. Im shopping for a used boat. All these dealers are telling me the hours on the motor. My ques. is how many hours are too much for a 2 to 3 year old motor. I know on used cars at 80,000 miles things are about to break (non rountine maint) . I just do not know after how many hours do things start to fall apart on outboards?

50 hours a year is considered average.

Also I've heard the average life expectany on a 2 stroke motor is 5000 hours. Avg. life expectancy on a 4 stroke motor is 15,000.

Then again, you know what they say about "what they say".

I average 250 hours a year on my outboard, but change the lower oil and plugs every 25 hours, and decarbon evern 100 hours. Keep a small book logging these "repairs" as well as anything else I do to the boat.

Most people do this type of maintenance just once a year no matter how many hours.

I think the 5k and 15k hours may be a little high for the average motor life, but don't see why a well cared for motor wouldn't last that long.

i have and hour meter on my dash and it says 42 hrs but i only have about 8 or so b/c i left the key turned on and the hrs kept counting...i dont know how some of these fancy boats/motors work but i have an 07 stratos and couldnt tell you how many hrs i truely had unless i had the meter and even then mine is off

The newer engines store the number of hours of usage in an internal computer. A mechanic can hook up a computer to the motor and get that info. It also will tell you how many hours have been run at specific levels of RPM's.


For example, the readout may be something like this ......

200 total hours.
30 hours at 1000 RPM's
20 hours at 2000 RPM's
40 hours at 3000 RPM's
60 hours at 4000 RPM's
50 hours at 5000 RPM's

good on the company's to do that... so people cant lie

I have no clue how many hours are on my engine either, I installed the dash hour meter so that I had a reference point for maintenance and fuel burn.

My engine is old enough that it doesn't have the computer either...

I have a 2001 Mercury 225 Optimax that has about 650 hours on it and it is running better than ever right now. I have been told that having that many hours on the motor really shows that it is a good motor that has held up just fine for quite a few years. I have been told by people that it should be good for at least 1000 hours or more which I couldn't put on in the next 5 to 10 years. In fact I have only put about 30 hours on it the last year and a half.
I have confidence it will go as long as maintenence is kept up and I have Rockwall Marine do all of my service work for me so I feel confident that it will run as long as I have it even though I know that when it comes to outboard motors you just never know.

I don't have a good answer for you but I can tell you that the "average" number of hours on an engine will go up dramatically when you buy a side imaging sonar unit!

There is virtually no upper limit on the service life of a properly maintained outboard motor. Premature deaths can always be explained by lack of preventive maintenance, failure to address problems as they arise, or just plain neglect.

If the routine maintenance is done, there is rarely a need for non-routine maintenance.

Sitting around idle for long periods is harder on a motor than regular use - rubber parts dry out and crack and rot, gasoline turns to varnish, internal engine parts lose their coating of oil and corrosion sets in, etc.

It's better to run them, than to be sitting.

I am in the process of buying a boat now. My dealer tells me that there is an hour meter that can be installed on that uses a pickup on a spark plug wire. It would only be counting when the engine is running.

just baught a 1973 65hp johnson 33yrs old has 135#compression runs like a new one who knows how long itll run

Thanks guys!!! good luck to all