Engine hours don't really tell you anything

I've owned my Silverton 38C for 17 years, cruising around the waters of New England.  When I first got the boat, I was excited about the fact that the engines had "low hours".

It turns out that engine hours really aren't that relevant to marine engine health.  Let's say you take a 2 hour cruise to your favorite destination, drop the hook for a couple of days, and then return to port.  Including warming up, docking, etc let's guess that with this trip you've put maybe 4 1/2 hours on your engine(s).

So you put the boat away, clean her up and go home for a week.  But now, your engines still have salt water sitting in them.  And when you repeat this process throughout your boating season, regardless of engine hours run, the engines still have salt water in them for all that time.

There are few liquids in the boating world more corrosive than salt water.  I first read about the concept of engine marine life from the guys at Seaboard Marine sbmar.com. It's not the hours, it's how long the engines are in saltwater!

Here is a picture of an aftercooler with low hours from a saltwater environment.

So what's the answer?

I have recently installed tee adaptors in my raw water intake lines. So now when I'm done cruising and the boat is put away, the last thing I'll do is connect the engines to dockside fresh water, start them and run fresh water through them for about 5 minutes each. Now when I go home and the boat is sitting there, the engines have FRESH WATER sitting in them. Non-corrosive. I am told that this will ADD SEASONS to my cooling system life before I need the totally expensive maintenance on the coolers.

So it's not hours, it's marine life. Here is a product that will work for your outboard or inboard/outboard motors:

If, like me, you have inboard engines, there are more heavy duty fittings and solutions for fresh water flushing out there. If you’re interested, send me a note and I’ll provide some links.

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