Re: What is a lot of hours for a 5.0 Mercruiser
How old is the boat. My preference would be a boat used more than a few hours a year. I'm in the south (north of atlanta) and you routinely see boats that are 10 years old with less than 200 hrs. Those did a lot of sitting around (averaging 20 hrs a year of use). I think the average boating in a "long" season like ours is 50 to 100 hrs a year. Another thing to consider is how the boat is used. My boat, a 2001 Chaparral 280 SSi jumbo bow rider with twin 5.0l Merc.s, is large and I spend most of my time loafing around, easy cruising (not so much tubing and skiing), consequently the 510 hrs on the boat are realtively "low hours". 510 hours of primarily pulling a tube/skiing would make this a "high" hour boat. The duty cycle of a boat is significantly different than a car, but a similar comparison can be made. Stop and go traffic (simliar to pulling a skier in duty cycle) is much harder on a car, a "city" car is consdered high mileage as it approaches 100k miles. A "highway" use car that pretty much cruises along without much load can easily see 200k miles. If you look at the hours on the boat, assume a car has the same hours (410) then at an average speed of 70 MPH only equates to 30,000 miles on the car. The "old rule of thumb" for engine life with moderate duty cycle is 1000 to 2000 hours and about half of that for the outdrive.
