I am looking at buying a 1991 20 foot Olympic boat with a Volvo 5.0 L I/O in it......motor has 1188 hours on it. Engine was well maintained at Performance Marine since it was new but I was wondering is that an excessive amount of hours?

That's a lot, but whether it is too many depends on how much work the engine has had over the years, and the boat's usage profile.

In any case, if the motor is raw-water cooled, I would walk away. There is no way to remedy the engine block corrosion that happens with raw-water cooling. I would expect such a motor to develop perforation of the water jacket through to the cylinder walls, degradation of the head and exhaust mainfold gasket surfaces, and stuffed-up passages from accumulated rust and sediment.

That's alot of hours regardless of how it was maintained.

There are alot of boats out there of that vintage with alot less hours---if you can wait two or three months when interest in boating is much lower--you can take advantage of deals in a buyers market--as opposed to sellers market we see right now when fishing and the weather are both hot.

My 2 cents

I'm thinking along the same lines as FG... corrosion, not wear is the concern. I had a 125 volvo that made it over 2000 hours, but it took lots of maintenance. It was freshwater cooled, trailered and rinsed every trip in the salt. If the boat you are considering has an unusually clean engine (little sign of corrosion, watch out for fresh paint covering it too) you may be ok at these hours. If it has been moored in SW or is not fw cooled I'd avoid it. Also check the outdrive carefully. An undiscoverd leak into the lower unit can lead to very expensive repairs also.
Good Luck!

lead thrower,

IMHO, Go with 4 stroke outboard setup.

Thanks all for the tips I know nothing about boats with motors

For 18K it seems like a good deal......

Summer run Outboard would be my number 1 choice!!! Just trying to find a boat with the funds available.

Rory
I also like the idea of waiting a few months for prices to go down.

You might consider negotiating the price of a new motor into the purchase price. If you get the current owner to believe that the existing motor is a throwaway, you may be able to knock a few $K off the price. Then you can go get a rebuilt 5.0L, and away you go. Same goes for the outdrive -- if it is original, use that as a bargaining tool. You may come out of it with a repowered Olympic, which is a mighty nice proposition IMO. If it doesn't work out and you end up selling the boat, you should be able to recover most of the repower cost.

As it sits now he is asking 18K

Is there a blue book for used boats?

I didn't see that at first -- that's a really lot of coin for a 13 YO 20' boat with >1100 hours, unless you really have to have an Olympic. What are you basing your comparisons on? I've bought 3 'glass boats 18-20' over the past 5 years, and $18K seems quite high. I would expect new power for that price.

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leadthrower, is that 18000.00 or is that a typo. man i could sure get a lot of boat for that price. keep looking!!!!

No it was 18,000

I looked at similar hard top Olympics but with outboards and they were running around 32K

I think I will keep looking due to the amount of hours on this boat. It looks like a sweet little boat however.

If anyone sees a boat with the following description let me know

Hard top with closing doors not the canvas on the back of the cabin

Outboard

Preferably 20-23 feet

18K-20K would be nice

Somewhere in the 1990”s

Oh I am not stuck on Olympic I just like the way the hard top and cab is set up on this particular boat.

Regardless of whether you buy this boat or another I would recommend getting the engine and outdrive surveyed before buying. It is worth the $150 or so to save yourself a more expensive problem. A lot of problems are easily covered up or hard to find. If you are like me, mechanicaly challenged, then a good survey is the way to go. Good luck. I like those Olympics.

That's good advice, Mike, but a survey might not reveal the problems. I dropped $2k on my current boat replacing crapped-out engine parts AFTER the survey came back clean. Maybe I got a bad survey, but it was done by a shop that is very popular and highly thought-of on this board.

Hours aren't the culprit here. If you think about a car with a 1 hour daily commute (each way) that's 594 trips. About two years of commuting. Any V-8 properly maintained should live long after that. The point that was brought up here that really matters iswhether the boat is fresh water cooled, or raw water cooled. Bearings for a worn outdrive are cheap. A saltwater corroded motor is not.

Thanks for the good advice all and the fresh vs raw water cooling issue was not something I knew about .....but I have been Piscatorial Pursuit Educated

Finegrain, sorry to hear about that. I guess there are no guarantees when buying used even if you do all you can to prevent buying a problem. Hope everything has been working well since then.

Not exactly ...

New fuel tank -- $1,000
Replace 2 month-old trim tabs -- freebie thanks to warranty
Replace 2 month-old starter -- freebie thanks to warranty
Replace 3 month old bilge pump -- freebie thanks to warranty

To kind of reiterate the hours Vs Corrosion issue consider this. If you figure the boat would cruise at 35mph then you can simply calculate out an average "Mileage" on the boat. 1188 hours at 35mph would give you approx 41,580 miles on that boat! Phew! That is a lot. But in reality for the engine it really isn't given that a similar Volvo in a car would go well over 100,000 miles. The biggest question is how was the boat taken care of. Was it regularly serviced? Did the boat get cleaned out every time it was in the salt, etc.