Is Boat Maintanance Exaggerated?

[Stingray23]

I'm gonna try and get me a bass boat early next year and will be buying used. I keep hearing about people having issues and constantly needing to replace something. Is this exaggerated? What is the standard maintanance that you should do every season? Is it expensive? I know with anything, especially used, you're gonna have to eventually replace something. I get that, but will it get annoying and expensive? I totally new to boats, and boat terminology.

[Sam]

No, not exaggrated.

You can have problems with these issues plus more:

Water pump.

Engine tune up.

Live Well pump.

Batteries.

Battery charger.

Trolling Motor.

Electrical System.

Damage to prop.

Damage to lower unit.

Carpet wearing out.

Circuit Breakers.

Fuel lines due to ethonol.

But once you get your own boat on the water it is all worth it!!!!

[Sam]

And by the way, have a motor compression check on all boats you are considering. It is worth the cost to have an independent bass boat and motor mechanic test and look over the motor.

You can follow the manufacturer's guide for annual maintenance.

I get my motor tuned uped each year and new grease in the lower unit.

Get trailer wheels greased and make sure the bearings are OK.

When buying a used boat have it checked out from stem to stern by a mechanic. If the owner will not let you do this then pass on the boat.

[Fishing Rhino]

Exaggerated? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what you consider "maintenance". Some lump repairs into maintenance. Two people buy the same car. One is fastidious about its maintenance, the other doesn't bother changing oil on a regular basis as well as other preventive maintenance. As a rule the lack of maintenace guy will have much larger repair bills.

Every fall I have my engine winterized, fuel filter(s) changed, fogged, all pivot points lubricated, lower unit lube changed and the water pump inspected. It costs just over a hundred bucks at BPS. It seems they usually have an end of the year special on these services. It's a win win for the customer and the dealer, particularly in the North when their service department work slows to a crawl.

Neglect is much more expensive than maintenance. That includes the carpet on a boat. When it gets soaked from rain or spray, use a wet or dry vac to get out most of the water. Not only does it speed the drying process, it removes the grit that causes causes most of the wear. When you use the boat and get sand on the carpet vacuum that before using the boat again. Your carpet will last much longer.

You play the major role in determining how much it costs to keep your boat shipshape and dependable.

The same goes for cleaning the rest of your boat. Clean and wax your boat with a product that has ultraviolet inhibiters regularly, be it fiberglass or aluminum. Be it gel coat or paint the sun will damage both. A little "elbow grease" goes a long way to extending the life of a boats components.

[Stingray23]

Thanks Sam&Rhino. I take care of all my things, I was just curious as I am new to boating. I will be winterizing it every year. I realize things will eventually break or fail, just wanted to get an idea.

[Long Mike]

There is an old saying that "a boat is a place in the water where you throw money."

[BKeith]

Yep, and the bigger the boat, the bigger the hole for more money.

If you are mechanically competent, it saves you a lot of money and down time waiting on repair shops. However, one can still be very expensive when you have a major motor malfunction/breakdown. It's very easy to spend hundreds and even several thousand on a motor break down. It's getting like the new cars, where they take a lot of specialized equipment and computer diagnostics to work on the newer motors, and there are not a lot of service technicians that really know what the heck they are doing with them.

[Fishing Rhino]

Yep, and the bigger the boat, the bigger the hole for more money.

If you are mechanically competent, it saves you a lot of money and down time waiting on repair shops. However, one can still be very expensive when you have a major motor malfunction/breakdown. It's very easy to spend hundreds and even several thousand on a motor break down. It's getting like the new cars, where they take a lot of specialized equipment and computer diagnostics to work on the newer motors, and there are not a lot of service technicians that really know what the heck they are doing with them.

What you say about new cars is true, but I would not want to go back to the cars of the 50s, 60s or 70s, before the days of computer controlled engines, trannies, etc. I used to love working on cars when I was a kid. They were simple and you could work on them without having expensive diagnostic equipment. In spite of that, cars today actually cost less to maintain when you factor inflation into the equation. When the spark plugs were fired by a distributor which contained points and a condenser, and a separately mounted coil, cars needed to be tuned up every 10,000 miles. Today's cars get their first tune up at 100,000 miles.

In that light, consider this, back in the day, if you had a car that lasted a hundred thousand miles, you had a rare vehicle.

Leaving tune-ups in our wake, the exhaust systems lasted two years, if you were lucky. First it was the muffler that went. Buy a muffler to replace the one that rotted out and you had to "pursuade" the muffler to be separated from the exhaust pipe which was between the muffler and the engine, and the tail pipe, which was behind the muffler. It was nearly impossible to get them apart without distorting the pieces you did not want to replace. The next section to fail was the exhaust pipe, or if the car was so equipped, the resonator, which was a smaller "muffler at the rear of the car.

Should we talk about how often ignition wires needed to be replaced, along with distributor caps so the car would start in damp weather or you could drive through a puddle without killing the engine?

I can remember cars being called rust buckets. Rusty Jones, Zeibart, and others made a fortune coating cars to inhibit rust, because if your car lived in an coastal environment or where salt was used on a regular basis, to melt ice and snow, the finish on cars began to blister because of rust. It usually began at the rocker panels and the bottom of the doors. The rusting condition was commonly referred to as cancer because once it appeared, it spread rapidly.

Engines started burning oil at around 30,000 miles and it was not an uncommon sight to see cars trailing plumes of smoke so thick that cars following them would practically need radar to stay on the road. I should not neglect the oil spots which splattered parking lots and driveways from leaks around rocker arm covers, front and rear main seals, plus tranny and rear end seals.

Both my wife's car and my truck have over a hundred thousand miles on them. Neither burns nor leaks oil and neither has had a single seal replaced.

Open the hood of any car back in the day and it was likely to have a wonderful coating of black grime on the engine from the blow by which came out of the vented oil filler cap, and the breather on the bottom of the engine. The upside was that engines rarely rusted. They had a thick protective buildup of engine vapors, road dust, and grime. Should we talk about generators and regulators vs. alternators? In the good old days, you could remove the cover of the alternator, and there were two or three adjustments which could be made to adjust the maximum output of the generator, and the level of the charge in the battery. It was not a good idea to tinker with those adjustments.

We could also talk about how the safety glass of that bygone era used to get milky between the two panels of glass. We could also consider how long shock absorbers and other suspension pieces such as ball joints and king pins lasted regardless of how often they were greased. These were pieces that also contributed to greasy spots on asphalt and concrete areas where cars were regularly parked.

After long dry periods, rain would make roads almost as slick as ice or snow. So much fluid leakage would occur on busy highways that when it finally did rain, these busy roads literally had oil slicks on the water covering the road when it finally rained.

The good old cars do have a lot of nostalgia, but in reality, compared to today's vehicles, they were junkers.

[BKeith]

I was only referencing to how technical outboard motors have gotten and expensive they are to repair when they do break. I WAS NOT bashing the technological advances in the newer automobiles. Some people seem to make an issue out of anything, (and managed to make a full page post out of it???).

Yes, in the 60's a car was considered pretty much worn out at 100,000 miles, and consumbed gas like there was no tomorrow, but they were very easy and much less expensive to repair. Many of the newer models today easily go 200 to 300,000 with minimal maintenance but are very expensive to repair when the do break. Which is pretty much what you can say about the outboards also, so get a life.

[00 mod]

BOAT= bust out another thousand

Jeff

[lkn4bss]

And by the way, have a motor compression check on all boats you are considering. It is worth the cost to have an independent bass boat and motor mechanic test and look over the motor.

You can follow the manufacturer's guide for annual maintenance.

I get my motor tuned uped each year and new grease in the lower unit.

Get trailer wheels greased and make sure the bearings are OK.

When buying a used boat have it checked out from stem to stern by a mechanic. If the owner will not let you do this then pass on the boat.

This is a must!! I just bought a used boat. Heard it run on muff's. Took it to the lake and it would not idle. Well it turns out I have low compression on one cylinder! Compression Test is a must! If it has a automatic oiler and cards. Remove the oiler and mix oil and gas!