I am looking to buy a new to me boat, I have seen several boats for sale that say only 40 hours on new powerhead. This concerns me that so many 225 and 250 motors have blown up with less than 200 hours on them. My question to everyone is how many hours is too many? I know some can go 500 and some 50 before poof!! A lot of the 2006 boats I have looked at have around 170-200 hours, do most motors have a lot more hours left in them? Any thoughts are appreciated. Don't want to buy a boat and then spend 4-5 k on it.

Ya gotta look at this way. Your only gonna hear about tha one's that do have a problem! Your not gonna hear about tha hundred's that are like tha "energizer bunny" in just about any brand of motor. If your buyin' used ya just gotta treat it as used when checkin' it all out. Its a [censored] shoot so get it checked out as good as possible by someone that knows what ta look for and hope for tha best............jmo

I have a 2009 115 Merc. four stroke with 650 hours on the meter. I have done all required maintenance. So far no problems.

Hours on the meter don't mean anything, because it runs hours just by the key being turned on. Also alot of the hours will be idle hours. What you need to do is get whoever your bing it from to let it be inspected by a shop and you pay for it if its the boat you want. Then they can hook up the computer and tell you how much time has been used at pretty much every rpm range.

Thanks for the advice, I will do that.