What would you consider to be average annual hours on a bass boat motor? May start looking for a 2-3 yr old used boat and would like to know what a reasonable # of hrs would be.

average?? I'd guess around 50-100
really depends on whether the previous owner was a tournament fisherman or a guide. they put alot more hours on a boat than most. although, alot of guides i know, use their trolling motor more than the main engine.

I have a 2005 optimax 225 and it just cleared over 102 hours and is still strong as it was the day I bought it.

The average guide will put around 200 to 250 per year here in TX.

We do checks all the time when we do our annual servicing. For the vast majority of the anglers out there, what we see is 50-100 hours per year is normal. But you also have to look at the overall run history to get a better idea.

I would rather have an engine with 300 hrs on it with the vast majority of that time spend at 3500 RPM, than an engine with 50 hrs on it with 90% of that time spent at Wide Open Throttle!

Thanks for the replies. You see ads for low hrs and didn't really khow compared to what.

depends on who the previous owner was too...I used to own a 225 efi mercury that was ragged out when I got it. within a few months, it started a lot of sloppy piston slap. then a month or two later it blew up all over the place...got it rebuilt by opti then guess what? it fell into lake lewisville...was a bad year for me

Keenan, I still have a black Champion 191 in my parking lot you can have back!

We have even repaired the busted stringers in the boat for you!

How do you check it? I write down a log where I estimate my hours but I recently saw an instrument in the dash to do that... is there some secret decoder ring under the cowling?

The Mercury Smartcraft instrument will display total hours when the ignition is first turned on, but that is only total hours. That don't tell you squat about the motor. Mecahnics hook up to the ECM with some sort of doohicky that will tell the run history. RPM's, hours run at each RPM range, how many times it has passed the limiter, etc.. Michael can tell ya, he did mine. Am I right Michael? You use a doohicky, right?

To answer the question, I did some number mashin. I used the following formula. A typical Saturday and Sunday angler who fishes 9 months out of the year @ 1 hour motor time per trip would rack up somewhere between 70-75 hours per year. You can figure a little less because they won't fish both days every weekend, unless his mother in law lives with em. In that case the motor time would be 365+ hours per year.