rebuilt motor

[rowyourboat]

im looking at buying my first bass boat. Many that im looking at say they have a rebuilt motor. Do you guys try to stay away from these or are they usually fixed after they are rebuilt?

[Jig Man]

Rebuilt motors are only as good as the parts put in and the guy putting them in.  If you don't have a good tech who can look at the motor, BEWARE!!

On the otherhand a good rebuild can last as long as or longer than the original motor depending on care.

[Way2slow]

"Rebuilt", that can mean anything the seller wants you to beleive. A couple of years ago a friend bought a boat/motor from a used car lot. The owners son was a mechanic for one of the boat dealers in that town. Laid a big sales pitch on about how he had rebuilt the motor, had been using the boat and was thinking about keeping it for himself. Even did a "cold" compression test while the friend watched. Told him 80# was normal for that motor and as long as they were within 10# they were good.

A couple of weeks later he asked me to go with him to the lake and see why it was so slow to get on plane. First thing right off the bat, the steering cables were so bad I could barely turn it. Second, the steering bracket was on wrong to it would barely turn to the left but turned real sharp to the right. Third, the four blade prop had a long chunk missing from one blade. The motor acted like it was low on power so we took it to my house. I warmed it up, did a leakdown test and a couple of the cylinder were over 50%. I pulled the heads, the cylinders were junk and had a couple of pistons that had chunks missing where they had burned down the side, but it had new rings.

A junk motor, he put new rings in so it would have cold compression and called it rebuilt.

My friends only saving grace was he had them put the motor was freshly rebuilt on the bill of sale. They screwed up trying to make things look good and put the motor was recently remanufactored. He took them to small claims court the with the help of another dealers mechanic and the judge awarded my friend a newly remanufactor powerhead to be installed by a neutral party and the guy that sold it would pay the whole bill.

Rebuilt or not, the motor is still only worth very little more that what that year model motor is worth in good used condition.  As soon as you buy it, that's all it is, a good used motor.   That's provided it was "properly" rebuilt to start with.

If it's a DFI motor motor, be extremely careful.  There's a lot of things that can cause them to blow and not many mechanics that really know how to fix them so they are subject to blow again in a short time.   A very expensive lesson learned.