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Old 11-16-2018, 03:11 PM   #23
foreverunderway
Senior Member
 
City: Grenadines
Join Date: Dec 2017
Posts: 167
Quote:
Originally Posted by gsholz View Post
I was looking a perfectly fine older boat from a quality builder. When they redid the interior ($$$) they removed all hour meters (2 engines, 2 generators). None in the engine room either. How do these people perform maintenance? The answer is, they do not.

I'm fine with replaced hour meters that have been used to keep track of maintenance for several years. Ideally, the owner would keep the old defunct hour meters to provide some history.

Newer engines, of course, keep total fuel and run-time in the ECM.

From the comments it seems many people don't care. This might be ok for smaller boats but once you get to the 60' range with $200+k machinery it is a show stopper.
It's that we don't care, it's that it is pretty easy to find out if an engine is in good condition. It may be costly, but you can remove a head, check a piston or shaft bearing in less than a day.
As for engine hour meters, we haven't had functioning ones for the genset or the ME since we bought the boat. How do we keep track of engine hours you ask? With an engine room log book. Pretty easy actually. And the servicing records of the engines is in there too!

Finally did get the Onan a new engine hour meter last month, but that was just because I ran into a good deal on it. The ME would require a new tach, which other than the engine hours, runs just fine.
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