I bought my buddies boat about two years ago and it had 120 hours on the hour meter. Since then I have put on about 70 hours on the motor.Its a 1991 Yamaha Pro V 150. My question is what is considered a lot of hours on a boat motor? Do they normaly last til 600 plus hours before a rebuild is due? I hope this is not a dumb question.
Thanks in advance.
Take good care of it and you will have a long way to go. I don't think anyone could narrow it down to hours. Too many variables to get down to hours per motor or brand. My guess would be 1500+
Mike
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You should have many hundreds of hours left before an overhaul. Of course there are exceptions. Run a compression test on it, and that will give you a base line set of cylinder pressures to go off of. Check it annually, and watch for big variances between the cylinders. (They should all be with-in 10% of the same). If it hasn't been over-reved alot, starved for lubrication, and the fuel/air mixture has been kept pretty close, that engine will probably run longer than you want to keep the boat. Yamaha really had those engines figured out. They are some of the tuffest around in my opinion.
I've got about 1800 hours on my old carbed 200s ('92s) on my Grady and about 700 hours on my '02 VMax HPDI 200 on my Hewes. I run Amsoil HP oil in 'em. The compression is still near stock in all of 'em. One cylinder on the old carbed motors is starting to drop a little (100 psi?) but overall the motors still run strong. I've seen motors with 3000 hours on them still running strong and I've seen motors with 30 hours on them grenade. All you can do is evaluate their overall condition and do a compression test once in a while. But if you buy a motor with no warranty you're just rolling the dice, maybe you'll get lucky and maybe you won't.
The biggest problem with the early carbed Yamahas was corrosion in the saltwater environment. They didn't start using stainless steel where they should have until the '93 model year, starting with the Saltwater Series motors. The shiftshaft was very weak in the early motors and susceptable to rust-thru and breaking. The steering bracket also corroded out prematurely. The carbs are very prone to clogging if allowed to sit for more than a few weeks without being run. The idle and main jets sit right in the bottom of the fuel bowls and when the fuel is allowed to evaporate it always leaves gunk and residue in the jet passages and causes idling problems. Run a fuel stabilizer (Sta-Bil , Walmart) in your fuel tank to help prevent fuel problems. Make sure the boat has a fuel/water separator in the fuel line. Spray the powerhead down with CRC HD Corrosion Inhibitor (Ace Hardware) to help fight corrosion. Good luck.
-Mike
Hold My Beer And Watch This !
I went to a waterski school in 2000 where the boat had a 4 year old 150 Yamaha with 4000 hours. Still running perfectly. It never got flushed, minimal maintenance but it did get used a lot...
Almost all of its work was 4500rpm plus. It was a barefoot boat with a 17" prop on it, so it would have been spinning.
Ran nice.
Thanks guys for your info.
Its always a good feeling when a guy can get good info from a top notch web site like this one.
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