Hey guys
i have a boat that I'm trying to sell . It is a 97 With a 96 115 Mercury Elpto.First question people ask is how many hours it has. Problem is there is no hour meter on the dash so I have no idea. Rang a marine mechanic and he said that it would have no computer to hook into to tell me. Is there any way to get hours?
In short - no.
Buy a second hand hour meter, and whatever it reads is what you can tell them, not exactly truth, but as it is, you have no idea!
do a compression check and give them the figures, one way way of atleast determining the condition of the engine!
Nope, all you can do is testify to the condition of the motor and happily hand it over to a mechanic if requested to verify this.
good luck with the sale, assuming the engine runs well it shouldn't be a major issue.
I know there isn't much you can do about an old donk. Im just about to fit a little digital hour meter to our 4 stroke tiller steer Tohatsu 30hp, 2011. First owner says it has under 100 hrs and as soon as Ican find someone with the software, I get a read out. I want to know hrs for servicing etc,
Cant see any reason one of these wouldn't work on any 2 stroke as well?
"let not he boast who puts his armor on, as he who takes it off"
The only motors that store hours in memory are those with EMM/ECU technology, carby motors do not have this feature, and indeed some EFI also do not, some might have some sort of hour meters built in, but to get a true indication that is readable with a computer, they need a "computer" controlled system (in simple terms)
I go with 20h per year for rec boats but of coarse like cars some might do twice or triple or more or half again but as a rule of thumb when nothing else can, it serves as a base. Some people are mad trollers or casters so always moving, trollers have low hp demand for hours running but casters zip lots of places at speed, others run long distances to fish offshore reefs all the time, others just smooth water family outings etc etc. I keep track of drums of 2 stroke oil purchased and from this I extrapolate.
I would if I was buying automatically guesstimate not less than 200 but not more than 400 until I found out some further owner behavioural info to recalculate, perhaps you might be able to give an estimate if you have not already but regardless if a buyer was going to use only hours as the final buying choice then they would also stump up for an experienced mechanical investigation because inexperienced boat ownership can age a 2 stroke 800h in just 200h (or less) of use if not propped correctly.
Update . Boat sold on compression test . Thx for your help
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