hours on a 1996 i/o 21' boat.

[beanz2166]

Can someone give me a rough estimate of what someone with a 1996 should be expecting on their hours gauge. Roughly about how many hours should the motor last (given it was taken care of) before one should start thinking rebuild? Again I know there are MANY factors in this just looking for rough Ideas

 

[Bondo]

Re: hours on a 1996 i/o 21' boat.

Can someone give me a rough estimate of what someone with a 1996 should be expecting on their hours gauge. Roughly about how many hours should the motor last (given it was taken care of) before one should start thinking rebuild? Again I know there are MANY factors in this just looking for rough Ideas

Ayuh,... Several Thousand hours,....

 

[JoLin]

Re: hours on a 1996 i/o 21' boat.

'Acceptable average hours' on a 1996 is impossible to estimate. It's been 17 years. Could have been used as little as 20 per year, as much as several hundred. Could have been laid up for several years at a time, or engine rebuilt or replaced along the way.

My 1997 had 350 hours on the original engines (verified with a scan tool during the pre-purchase survey) when I bought it in 2010. It's a ridiculously low number which would usually be considered a negative. But the engines checked out fine and have been troublefree except for 1 fuel pump and 1 raw water pump. No mechanical issues. Even I couldn't tell you with certainty how many hours I've racked up in the last 3 seasons. Somewhere between 100 and 200 hours.

Your best bet is to have the mechanicals checked out very well and verify maintenance.

My .02

 

[H20Rat]

Re: hours on a 1996 i/o 21' boat.

Unless you are reading the computer for hours, the gauge itself is worthless... You don't know if it has been replaced to start with. Also, hour gauges are notoriously unreliable and have a tendency to start and stop when the feel like it. Also, some manufacturers go the cheap route and the gauge runs when the key is on the 'on' position, instead of actually using a wire from the engine. So if someone often floats with the key on, it runs up the gauge.

Finally, the gauge doesn't tell you anything about maintenance or how hard the engine was run.


A compression test will tell you far more than an hour gauge will ever hope to!

 

[agallant80]

Re: hours on a 1996 i/o 21' boat.

42.

Sorry someone had to do it.

 

[tpenfield]

Re: hours on a 1996 i/o 21' boat.

50 hours per year would be "typical" . . . So, 800 hours would be expected . . . 400 hours would be considered light and 1200+ hours would be considered high.

If something seems out of whack, you can verify the gauge versus the engine computer.

 

[MarkSee]

Re: hours on a 1996 i/o 21' boat.

Can someone give me a rough estimate of what someone with a 1996 should be expecting on their hours gauge. Roughly about how many hours should the motor last (given it was taken care of) before one should start thinking rebuild? Again I know there are MANY factors in this just looking for rough Ideas

Based upon the above answers, who can really answer that question and you kind of indicate you know that.

Now throw in these:
1-location of the boat and what is the duration of the boating season: could be only a few months or year round as we here in SoCal
2-what is "taken care of" to one owner can be a "lack of proper maintenance" to another
3-time to think of rebuild is when the motor start showing signs it might need it

As Ted indicated about roughly 50 but again that is so subjective. When I was selling my Maxum last year, it averaged less than 40 hours per year yet I had folks trying to tell me that it had "high hours". No, what they were comparing it against was the guys with similar boats who only take their boats to the river on vacation twice a year and put 25 hours a year on them then it's parked the rest of the year.

Mark

 

[Mason78]

Re: hours on a 1996 i/o 21' boat.

When I first got into boating, I tried to think of boat engine hours the same way a person thinks of miles on a car. I have now learned that they are too different to attempt a comparison.

I have been on a boat with 1000 original engine hours (no rebuild) that ran perfectly. I also water tested a boat with 175 hours that ran horrible.

It seems that too few hours can be as much an issue as too many. It often means the boat sat around, possibly for several years, and was neglected.

 

[ezmobee]

Re: hours on a 1996 i/o 21' boat.

It seems that too few hours can be as much an issue as too many. It often means the boat sat around, possibly for several years, and was neglected.

Best thing you can do for a boat is run it (up to a point obviously). They break when they're sittin'.