What is considered "High Hours" on a motor?

Curious what you guys have to say in regards to what is considered a lot of hours on a boat motor?
2 Stroke and 4 stroke, big motor or small.
Thanks for your input

The tuna guys in Louisiana routinely go 50+ miles a day on their triple yamaha 300s. They change oil every 9th day of fishing and gear lube every other oil change if I understood them right. Roughly corresponds to 100 hrs for oil and 200 for gear lube. They trade off the motors when they get around 6000 hrs on them as they start to become unreliable. So this is all extreme but the only example of folks I know who run up the hours. FYI,…that’s a 115 lb tuna who whooped my butt.

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I just sold my Pro-V with 500 hrs. on a 175 Verado. It was funny how a few folks thought it was high hours and the guys that actually know boats equated it to about 20k miles on a vehicle. I think it will be interesting once all the boats with hour meters near 20 years old and have accumulated hours to see what the longevity of these motors really is.

captddh wrote:

The tuna guys in Louisiana routinely go 50+ miles a day on their triple Yamaha 300s. They change the oil every 9th day of fishing and gear lube every other oil change if I understood them right. Roughly corresponds to 100 hrs for oil and 200 for gear lube. They trade off the motors when they get around 6000 hrs on them as they start to become unreliable. So this is all extreme but the only example of folks I know who run up the hours. FYI,…that’s a 115 lb tuna who whooped my butt.

That’s intense!
In my opinion, there’s a happy medium. Not running vehicles is just as bad or worse than putting miles on it. But as captddh said, there is a point when they become unreliable but most motors around us aren’t being run to that point ever. I would look more to maintenance history than hours if its a lot. I know motors pretty well, there are little things to look for, just doing a simple compression test can tell you a lot about a motor. Best advice, test drive. A seller will fire it up and let it run for you, but that doesn’t tell you everything. We had a motor that runs amazingly until you throttle it on the water and it bogs down and would sometimes stall. Get a test drive if you can! (Assuming you’re buying a boat and not just the motor)

It’s all relative to where you live.

In the Midwest, 500 hours is “high,” even though it isn’t.

I wouldn’t bat an eye buying a motor with 1,000 hrs….but the price should reflect it’s use, because the next guy won’t pay top dollar for it either.

Big 4 strokes are good for 5,000 to 6,000 hours. I don’t know in what world 500 hours is high unless it is per year.

SuperDave1959 wrote:

Big 4 strokes are good for 5,000 to 6,000 hours. I don’t know in what world 500 hours is high unless it is per year.

In the Midwest we have 2 months of open water

There’s a ton of boats here that are 10-15 years old with just a few hundred hours….or less.

I just bought a 2012 w/ 151 hrs on the main motor(yammy F150). Boat was bought in fall of 2012, so that equates to roughly 25 hrs per yr. I know the seller very, very well. He fished a ton, but was mostly a troller. The kicker hrs are unknown, but I know they are a heck of a lot higher. From my experience, most people without hour meters grossly overestimate their hours. The 100 hr per year guys are definitely in the tiny minority.

I had the same discussion as captddh with my guide in Florida. He ran a 250 Yamaha on a skeeter center counsel and it was pretty common for him to run 40 miles a day into the Everglades. He started to get nervous around 5000 hours.

These new 4 strokes are pretty indestructible if taken care of .

This would be me unfortunately! I bought my Ranger 619 with a 225 Pro Xs new in “09” and I think I have about 100 hours on it yet when I put it in storage. I keep thinking this is the year I’ll get out more!

500hrs on a motor that has not been well maintained might be a lot. I found it very interesting how many people asked about the hours on my motor but no one asked how I took care of it.

I’ve never had a boat with an hour meter yet. Most recents a 2016. I would look more at how well kept the boat is and what a guy could show you for maintenance. I’d rather have high hours and taken care of then low hours and beat on.

If your buying a decent sized boat I can’t see a reason to not buy new with how high used boats are selling. A good sized boat with a decent sized motor costs a fortune even if it’s ten years old.

Mike W wrote:

500hrs on a motor that has not been well maintained might be a lot. I found it very interesting how many people asked about the hours on my motor but no one asked how I took care of it.

Would rather have a few more hours on a well maintained motor, than low hours on one that sat.

Based on my hour meter, I put about 25 to 45 hours a year on it. High year was 50 hours. It’s a newer, ’14, four stroke with less than 200 hours.

Based on my experience, a well maintained four stroke with 1,000 hours wouldn’t bother me one bit. An un-maintained four stroke with 400 hours would scare me.

Sadly, there are probably more under maintained motors than well maintained.

Agreed. And there is no meter on the motor that shows maintenance. Guess just like a vehicle a good indicator might be the condition of everything else on the boat.

Anyone every ask how many hrs on a trolling motor? Bet in many boats hours on that motor far exceed the hrs on the main motor.

Put my own hour meter on the kicker after the first year so it’s off by a few hundred but at least have a rough idea. The clip on hour meters are easy to install.

Mike W wrote:

500hrs on a motor that has not been well maintained might be a lot. I found it very interesting how many people asked about the hours on my motor but no one asked how I took care of it.

Mike its like a car, look at the rest of the Boat and trailer or there house if your meeting them to look at it, easy to spot someone who takes care of there stuff.

Tiller owners routinely will have 2 x3 times more hrs than wheel boat owners. Maintained hrs is the most important to me….

Yamaha had a ad campaign a few years back on a water taxi with 15000 yes thousand hrs and just standard maintenance.

We routinely on our trades have more dollars invested into a under used low hr motor than a well maintained average or high hr motor.

Who had it and history is the biggest factor in my opinion regardless of brand.

If I was looking at a used motor I would consider hours but more so a compression test and a leak down test these will tell you more then just hours.

I have seen motors with two to three thousand hours on them that look and test almost as good as new,by that I mean they will dyno at ninety five percent plus of what new is and there is a ton of life left in them.

older generation motors that dont have hour meters built into the computer can tell you a lot with a leak down/compression test before tuning,if the numbers look good then a tune up/carb cleaning is in order then ran on the dyno to finish dialing them in and you can tell if they are going to last a long time or not from there depending on the numbers from the dyno.
some may be good for another five hundred hours,some even more.

now,when I see one come in and the lower unit is beat to hell or covered up with scale of whatever origin and the oil bottle regardless of quality is laying in sand in the bottom of the boat and the gas can looks like it was drug down the road behind the boat by its fuel hose I can about bet that motor regardless of true hours doesnt have many left in it.
those are the ones you tell the owner you are six weeks behind in work and send them down the road.
( the sad part is often times the owner is saying how he bought it new five years ago and is sure it doesnt have over a hundred hours on it)

the biggest fear I have in two strokes of older vintage even if the cylinders still have a cross hatch pattern in them from factory honing is the crankshaft seals being dried out.
that will cause them to run lean from sucking air past the seals and it wont be long for this world.
fuel injected and four stroke engines that have sat for any length of time can suffer from bad fuel pumps,stuck injectors,cams that have went dry from extended sitting,etc.

I have however brought many of these motors back to life after explaining to the customer that necessary steps must be taken if they expect the motor to live for very long and want to keep it for any length of time.
sure,an expected “tune-up” that would of cost three hundred dollars is now close to or over a thousand bucks,more if you start replacing fuel pumps on injected engines.
sticker shock for sure but have you tried buying a new fifty horse,heck,a twenty horse lately of any brand for less than that???

these motors still amaze me though for the abuse that they will take and take and still keep on going,a good example is the resort I go to every year in northern Mn.
there is a young family there that has an old evinrude that starts hard,rattles loud enough to wake the dead,smokes something terrible and you would swear the pistons are switching holes trying to figure out where they belong at high speed,if it were mine and I were running it,I would be ducking low so that when those pistons decide to vacate the block they wouldnt hit me in the head !!!

Always enjoy reading your stuff sheldon