Engine hour expectations

[PaPaSki]

I am looking to buy a Nautique 200 and was wondering how many engine hours before I should expect to start needing to do more serious maintenance. I am looking at a 2011 with 708 hours. I am told about 500 were with a ski club that was the original owner and about 200 with current owner. How do you account for engine hours in price using NADA as the base for the price estimate.

[SilentSeven]

Just a few thoughts that might help.

Right now, seems like boat prices are crazy (high) with many buyers coming into the market looking for Covid recreation options. I'm not sure the NADA guide was ever any good for these boats but right now it's likely even less good.

Re the hours...that's a very reasonable number of hours and there are lots of stories out there of boats going 2000 to 3000+ hours before any serious mechanical work. My '97 GT-40 Ski Nautique had 1600 hours and great compression when I sold it. It ran perfectly and burned zero oil. (It did need a new front transmission seal which I replaced). What you will start to see with higher hour boats (1000 to 1200+ maybe) is that you have to start to redo shaft and rudder packings, replace hoses, maybe redo the cutlass bearing, maybe do some tune up items like plug wires, etc. Assuming the boat hasn't been abused, you'll likely being doing these items before you're doing major engine work.

School boats are interesting. Frequently they are well maintained - ie: on a regular maintenance schedule - but have more 'hard use' hours. By this I mean their hours are not put put low RPM lake cruising hours but are hours incurred while towing. Again, this isn't bad...as long at the school had a good maintenance program. Can you talk to the school to understand how they maintain their boats?

IIR, the dealer has a way to pull the hour information from the engine ECU and this also exposes how hard the boat was run over those hours. Maybe someone can recall the name of this service or you can find it via searching. You might want to look into this. If all else fails and you're concerned, have a compression test run on the engine by a mechanic and see if the numbers look good.

But again, I wouldn't be scared of that number of hours if the boat is clean and everything else looks good. Maybe you can negotiate a few K off the asking price..maybe not.

[gonefishin5555]

I am looking to buy a Nautique 200 and was wondering how many engine hours before I should expect to start needing to do more serious maintenance. I am looking at a 2011 with 708 hours. I am told about 500 were with a ski club that was the original owner and about 200 with current owner. How do you account for engine hours in price using NADA as the base for the price estimate.

When inventory is tight it’s hard to use high hours to negotiate. Those hours are maybe slightly above average. I’d probably try find something under 500 which is about 50 hours a year. Just take 2k off the price and put the 2k in a reserve fund for when you get hit with a big repair bill. That or use the money to upgrade the stereo lol

[Jonny Quest]

I do a fair bit of skiing all summer and put approx. 100 hours per year on my Ski Nautique. 700 hours for a 9 year old boat doesn't seem too high at all...think of it as a guy who puts 15,000 miles on his car every year. Yes, it will impact the value, but that boat should have plenty of life left in her. (Yes, prices are stupid-high...you may want to wait until Oct/Nov)

JQ