Water left in a gearcase over winter. A padded bill you can't question. A used boat that was broken before you bought it. I spent forty years in a marina service bay watching good owners lose money in those three places, so I wrote down everything that stops it, and gave you a logbook to keep.
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Water left in the gearcase over winter. That's what used and rebuilt lower units for common mid-size motors are listed for, before labor. Draining the gear oil and looking at it each fall takes twenty minutes. (Chapter 1)
Bad fuel left in the tank. The average repair bill among BoatUS members who reported suspected ethanol damage in a 2015 member survey. Stopped by a nearly full, treated tank. (Chapter 1)
A diagnostic fee for a loose lanyard. One marina's posted diagnostic charge, on top of $150 an hour labor. Half the "dead" motors I saw needed a thirty-second check first. (Chapters 4 and 6)
Wired to a fake escrow company. BoatUS reported two buyers who lost that much paying for used boats that didn't exist. The red flags are in the book. (Chapter 5)
Real examples and typical ranges from the book's research, not promises. What you save depends on your situation and your decisions.
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Almost every expensive repair I wrote up traced back to one of these. None of them needed a mechanic's training to prevent. They needed somebody to tell the owner, and a place to write it down.
Water in the gearcase, varnished fuel, acid in old oil, a battery left to die. Every one is cheap in the fall and expensive in April.
Bundled "services", parts thrown at a problem, a verdict with no test behind it. You don't need to fix it yourself. You need to know what to ask.
A soft transom, milky gear oil, one weak cylinder, or no boat at all behind an online listing. The checks take an hour.
Bearings are the second biggest reason trailer boaters call for roadside help. Most of those calls are a maintenance job that didn't get done.
A careful man brought in his bass boat one April. Six years old, clean as a whistle, flushed after every trip. The lower unit was weeping oil from a crack you could fit a fingernail in, and what we drained out of it looked like a chocolate milkshake.
Water had been getting past a small seal all summer. It sat in the gearcase all winter and froze. If he'd drained that oil in October and looked at it, he'd have paid for a seal job. Nobody had ever told him to look.
I wrote up that bill, and a thousand like it, for forty years. This book is so you never have to hear that news at a service counter.
Every chapter comes back to these. They're why the book is built around a logbook, not just pages to read.
Water, bad fuel, heat, corrosion and neglect kill outboards. The fall and spring checklists stop all five, cheapest step first.
Written estimate, each job on its own line, a call before going over, your old parts back, and the test result behind every big verdict.
Dates, engine hours, what was done and what it cost. The owner with records gets better service and a better price when it's time to sell.
"Write it down or it didn't happen."
As you read, you fill in a logbook for your own boat: the checklists, every service by engine hours, the trailer, every shop visit.
The five things that send outboards to the shop, and the You / Maybe / Pay-a-Pro label on every job.
The fall layup: reading your gear oil, fuel and ethanol, fogging, the hidden anodes, the battery and the mice.
The spring checklist, the telltale, the impeller schedule, flushing after salt, the 100-hour service in one table.
Bearings, why you cool hubs before backing in, tire date codes and pressure, chains and lights.
Written estimates, book time, old parts back, and 9 Counter Cards for the most-padded jobs. What the warranty law really says.
Hull number and lien checks, the transom, the cold lake test, compression, surveyors, and online listing scams.
Won't crank, won't start, dies, revs but won't go, trim dead: the cheapest cause first, before you pay a diagnostic fee.
Your logbook as a sales tool, trade-in vs private sale, and a letter for your family.
Boat Profile, Fall Layup and Spring checklists, Engine Service Log, Trailer Log, Shop File, Estimate Checklist, cut-out Counter Cards, Pre-Purchase Inspection, Letter to My Family.
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Hype is cheap. Every figure, rule and range in this book traces to a published source, and where the honest answer is "it depends," the book says so and tells you who to ask.
No organization named here is affiliated with or endorses this book.
If the boat matters to someone you love, this keeps it running and keeps his money where it belongs. Gumroad lets you buy it as a gift and send it straight to his email.
I spent forty years in the service bay of a lake marina, mostly on outboards. I've winterized thousands of them and opened more lower units than I can count. These days I fix the neighbors' motors in my pole barn.
This book is everything I wished every owner who walked up to our counter had known: what to do, when to do it, what to ask, and how to keep the record that proves it.
— Hank
Hank Tolliver is the narrator character presented by Lumen Works; his stories are composites drawn from common experiences. The guidance in the book is researched from published sources and is educational. It does not replace your owner's manual or a qualified marine technician.
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