Why on Earth....Spoiling the ship for half-penarth of tar. Hours Meter.

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oldgit

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Have been making inquires regards a number of Princess 35s around the country.
Two of them,remain resolutely unsold at the very bottom of the price scale.
Neither have hours meter fitted.
What on earth were the first owners thinking of by saving at best £20 quid on a hours meter while spending the price of small house on boat.
We all know you must go on the overall condition of a boat bit not knowing if boat has done 700 or 7000 hours must be sale killer ?
 
Agree but would a good engineer not be able to determine how much or little an engine has been used and whether it's been well maintained and equally...if it's at the end of its life? Selling on might prove difficult so that might be the deal breaker for me, yes.
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:)
 
An hours meter can lie, have been replaced or broken. High engine hours can be a better boat as it has not be laid up for long periods.

I would have suggested an inspection and detailed oil analysis (which are available online) would be worth more than an hour meter
 
.The problem with the oil analysis route is that the boat needs to be run up to operating temperature in order to get an accurate proportion of metal suspended in the oil.
One of the boats is ashore.
 
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My hour meters have stopped at 950 hours before I bought the boat. But I was delighted and comfortable the engines had been well serviced, in fact rebuilt, with 3 lever arch files of receipts that go back to her leaving factory. That and starting them up and listenning to them hum pefectly was the clincher. Oil analysis on it's own (single sample) without a trend or knowlege of oil change history will tell you very little. It's benefit lies in trend and prediction analytics. A single sample wont do that.
 
My parents various ride on mowers they've owned over the years have all had hour meters

If the likes of husqvarna, Westwood etc can sell a few grands worth of ride on mower with an hour meter & still make a profit, it makes no sense on boats not having them :cool:
 
I think that the older a boat gets the less relevant that engine hour readings are, primary becuause the chances of malfunction/replacement increases. When we sold our last boat the meters had died (a common fault on that particular type) so we had replaced the tachos. The work we had done and the overall condition of the boat were far more important to the buyer.
 
Would have though it would be standard fit in the tachometer and the buyer possibly declined to have them installed.
Still seems a bit daft, as most servicing would have to be done on hours,not a good omen for this boat.
Wonder if the boat has an old fashioned mechanical log ?
 
And, oil analysis needs a baseline. OK, a catastrophic failure would be apparent, but most wear is gradual, and unless the oil has been sampled on a regular basis it's not too reliable.
 
makes me wonder if they did have hour meters, but at such high values that it was putting people off, so they were removed to give that element of uncertainty
 
Problem is ,like car mileage, a highish figuire will guarantee that 75% of your possible buyers will not even consider coming to see your immaculate fully serviced bargain, but a few will.
Try announcing in your advert you have absolutely no idea of the mileage and unless you are giving it away,be prepared for a very long wait indeed.
Any clue to wear and tear is going to be of some help.
 
I agree, the general rule is that if it's not mentioned then assume the worst, so i'd be imagining tens of thousands of hours deliberately hidden when it might "only" be in the thousands and still worth a look.
 
Our hour counters are currently not always displaying the values. It doesn't matter to us as we keep a log of hours run. On the odd time they do display we jot the number down as a cross check.

We know that the hour counter was changed when we bought the boat so the figure displaying on the counter is 240 hours out.

Hour counters shouldn't be relied on for true hours run.

It is a common fault with the counter we have so I don't think we would rush out and replace it just because we were going to sell the boat.
 
I think it is very rare a properly maintained marine diesel actually wears out. They are good for many more hours than a leisure boater can reasonably put on them in their ownership of the boat.

Lots of marine diesels die because they were not properly maintained, they were over heated (due to issues with coolant circulation - e.g. blocked raw water intake), critical bits have been damaged by electrolysis since the anodes were not changed, or a million other things. But getting worn out is pretty unusual (unless we are looking at an old ferry boat, or an old commercial vessel of some kind).

Even SunSail don't manage to actually wear the engines out on their charter fleet.

So the hour meter is only an indication one one way of the engine dying, and a very rare way of dying as well. Lots of more important things to check.
 
A worn out alternator or gear box or water pump or other ancillary can be replaced (at some expense) in situ,a small annoyance at best.
Even the replacement of lump of metal such as heat exchanger can be anticipated and factored into the purchase price,as can shafts and stern gear.
The rebuilding or possible replacement of an entire engine,not usual looking at some Mobos up for sale in this section of the market ,is a major operation possibly making the job uneconomic at this level of purchase,not even taking into account the boat could be unusable for months.Not even thinking about the fact that most motorboats have to virtually demolished to even reveal the bits you want to get at.
IMHO the engine block and pistons are the heart of the MoBo everything else is just perishables. :)
 
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michaelchapman said:
I think it is very rare a properly maintained marine diesel actually wears out. They are good for many more hours than a leisure boater can reasonably put on them in their ownership of the boat.

Lots of marine diesels die because they were not properly maintained, they were over heated (due to issues with coolant circulation - e.g. blocked raw water intake), critical bits have been damaged by electrolysis since the anodes were not changed, or a million other things. But getting worn out is pretty unusual (unless we are looking at an old ferry boat, or an old commercial vessel of some kind).

Even SunSail don't manage to actually wear the engines out on their charter fleet.

So the hour meter is only an indication one one way of the engine dying, and a very rare way of dying as well. Lots of more important things to check.
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Concur with your view that wearing out of base motor is highly unlikely in marine leisure environment however lack of working hour meter is indefensible, how the heck do determine service intervals?

Time is OK but hour meter in conjunction with time makes most sense.
 
oldgit said:
What on earth were the first owners thinking of by saving at best £20 quid on a hours meter while spending the price of small house on boat.
We all know you must go on the overall condition of a boat bit not knowing if boat has done 700 or 7000 hours must be sale killer ?
Click to expand...

Presumably, in the days when these boats were built, hour meters were not regarded as necessary . I know of boats including a Princess with no hour meter fitted.
Having bought a boat with low hours and now experiencing an issue associated with lack of use I am persuaded high hours, plus regular service , is better than low hours. By some 25 years age or more I would expect some risk of issues regardless of hours.
 
The Princess 35 looked at and one other of a similar vintage were the only boats we viewed lacking an hour meter for each engine.
Even my previous Princess 25 and Princess 33 built in the late 1970s had one installed as standard for each power unit..
.
 
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oldgit said:
.The problem with the oil analysis route is that the boat needs to be run up to operating temperature in order to get an accurate proportion of metal suspended in the oil.
Click to expand...
And you need to know how long the oil has been in the engines and how many hours the engines have run since the last oil change otherwise the oil is not an accurate reflection of the condition of the engines. I have been told that the oil needs at least 30 engine running hours before an oil analysis accurately reflects the condition of an engine and even then it is only a snapshot in time as a more useful indication is a series of oil analysis results over a period of years showing the trend in contaminants

IMHO some sellers are getting wise to this oil analysis stuff and deliberately changing the oil in their engines before they sell in order to ensure that an analysis comes back OK. It is absolutely vital to try to find out how many hours the oil has done otherwise an analysis is simply not worth doing especially if you suspect that the oil has been changed recently

However having said all that, an oil analysis once saved me from buying a lemon with dud engines so it can be very well worth doing
 
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