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It's Technicians Tuesday everybody, and today is for all of you who actually maintain your engines
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not just performing maintenance after the engine won't start anymore. Now here's how you can save some money on this expense
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The contest prize today is for someone that needs some new gauges. We just got our gauges back from gaugesaver.com, and they did a fantastic job
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So if your gauges or even your GPS isn't legible anymore, you want to be subscribed to the channel
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and follow us on Instagram. When it comes to the cost of maintenance, it can get expensive
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There are a few methods that can save you some money though, but let's start by designating
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what exactly is maintenance and what items does a service include. Maintenance or service is the process of changing out items of your engine that help to keep
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it running properly and items that eventually wear out or become dirty with continued use
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Your normal service items on a two-stroke engine are the boat fuel filter, the engine fuel filter, oil filters, sometimes air filters, thermostats, the spark plugs, sometimes belts, the water pump impellers, and occasionally the lower unit seals
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Sacrificial anodes or zincs, both on the block, lower unit, and the engine bracket
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Depending on the age of the engine, the fuel-injected two-strokes will also have screens and filters on the vapor separator's
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tank. These aren't necessarily considered your normal service items, but technically they are
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quote unquote service items. Then when it comes to a four stroke, we have all of these same
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exact items with the addition of the engine oil and an oil filter. So why does it cost more to
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maintain a four stroke than a two stroke? Which is actually a twofold question because of how
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oil a two stroke can be, we just tend to service them a lot less and it has less of an effect on
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the engine when service is left undone for longer. periods of time. With a two-stroke, most of us just change the fuel filters, gear lub, and the
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spark plugs. We consider that a service when it comes to a two-stroke, we'll ride out that
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impeller for five years and only change the thermostats when we get an overheat issue. The oil
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filters are usually buried so we don't worry about changing it unless there is an issue there
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and thus we all see how much cheaper it is to quote-unquote maintain a two-stroke. The other side
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of that is that some of the parts to a four-stroke are a little more expensive
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usually the spark plugs On a conventional two engine plugs need to be changed way more often than on a four But they usually only cost around a piece where a four can cost 15 even into the range per plug
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Then comparing the oil filters, the two-stroke oil filter costs around $14, and the four-stroke is more in the $20 range
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The thermostats, anodes, fuel filters, and stuff like that are all pretty comparable, though
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and there are also some price gaps for parts ranging across the different manufacturers as well
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So it's really not that big of a gap, maybe $100 to a couple hundred dollars
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if you are changing all of these components at the same time. Which brings us to our first tip on saving some money
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and that is by just keeping a log of your service records. We need to keep track of three main pieces of information
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and there how many hours were on the engine, what was the date, and exactly what components got changed
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We'll put emphasis on this because of the scheduling of the service
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If you want to save money on the maintenance costs per year, then we'll need to get creative on how we do it by playing around with the log
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Usually, if you're paying to have your service done, there is a labor charge
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Whether that be $100 bucks an hour or $150 bucks an hour, there is always going to be a charge for the time
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The general time rate is about two and a half hours per engine without doing the impellers or thermostats
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When the impellers are done, the lower units need to come off the engine to be changed
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And the time cost to do the impellers is usually an extra two hours per engine
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Given that there aren't any other issues that occur, things like salt buildup, corrosion, and broken bolts or parts that can add to that time expense
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So we're looking at about four and a half to five hours per engine for a full service with impellers
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At $100 an hour, we're looking at around $500 plus the cost of parts as well as tax
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which can put the service up to around $1,000 or more. And down here in the Keys, there isn't any shop that is still charging labor rate at $100 an hour
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Some places are up to $175 an hour, and they aren't slowing down nor going to be bringing their prices down either
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So $1,000 is a conservative number per engine for a complete full service of an outboard engine
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which brings us back to the question of how to save money on this expensive task
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There are three main ways to cut costs here. That is through scheduling, parts purchasing, and labor
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We can save money per year by how we schedule and perform maintenance on our engine
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By using our log or records that we are keeping, we know that the service items that need to be replaced won change but we can play with how we change them and win In my opinion the best way to do this is by splitting up the service in two ways
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We'll always be doing the gear lube, the oil change, oil filter on four strokes
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and fuel filters at every service period. But we can split how we do the impeller
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thermostats, spark plugs, belts, and anodes. The anodes are a visual inspection type of item, though
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So when we say anodes, we'll pull one out and inspect it when we have the anodes scheduled to be done
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and only change them if they need to be changed. Generally, when they are about 50 to 70% corroded away
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we'll say to do the anodes, belts, and spark plugs together, then do the thermostats and the impeller the next time
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Because the cost of labor and the impeller seals and thermostats together
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is about equal to the cost of the anodes, plugs, and belts together
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We can then stay on that schedule spreading out the expense by scheduling half the expensive parts on one service and the other half for the next service
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We are basically just equalizing the cost per year over every year
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So instead of one year costing $1,500 to $1,500 for the full service
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and the next year only costing $500, we'll split it up and it will cost an even $750 per year every year
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saving us more money per year by keeping more cash in your hand per year
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instead of having that big expensive year. By utilizing a minimum, method of scheduling your service intervals based on that type of a service schedule, we can also
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save by knowing when our service will be and what we'll need to do at that service time
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This allows you to save money on the parts, because we are prepared, we can order our parts
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online and save a significant amount on the parts and just have them on hand when it comes
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time to do the service. And when I say on hand, that doesn't mean left on the boat for six
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months sitting in a puddle of water already rusting away. We'll save here because the MSRPs
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or OEM price set by the manufacturer will stay the same, but different dealers, marinas
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shops, and servicers will all have some variance in the cost of the parts. A lot of this is based
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on location, the overhead expenses of the shop, the handling of the parts, and the taxes that go
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along with distributing the parts. Whereas purchasing them online, we can usually buy them from a
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supplier that doesn't have a lot of these overhead expenses, giving them the ability to sell the
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parts for a deeply discounted rate than other smaller suppliers can, because they are shooting for
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volume of parts being sold not so much the net income that they make per part that the smaller place does because they don sell as many parts This then brings us to the part where we can really
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save the most money, which is why you will want to smash that like button and get subscribe
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to the channel so that you don't miss out on all of our cash saving informational videos
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Also, let us know about how you handle your maintenance in the comment section below
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and include a hashtag gauge saver to enter for your chance to win the
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gagesaver.com gauge repair price. Now saving the most money is going to be found in the labor department
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aka DIYing the maintenance ourselves. Out of the cost per service, about half, sometimes more of the
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total cost is found in the labor. If we can cut that bill in half by doing the work ourselves
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that's how you can save some real money. Outboard services aren't that taunting of a task either
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They are really a remove and replace type of operation. Since there is
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isn't any diagnostics to be done in the process once you know what parts, where they are
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and what you need to replace them? You are basically home free
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There are also plenty of online resources these days that can aid in tackling this process
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We have many service videos covering a range of different engines, horsepower, and services
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That can help you get a head start on your service. Even if you just tackle a couple of the service items and then have some of the other stuff
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done by a professional, you will be able to save some money over the service. over the total maintenance expense every year
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It's up to you on what items you want to tackle, but learning to do most of the remove and replace items
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like the spark plugs, belts, fuel filters, and even in thermostats can really help you out here
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The bigger investment is going to be the cost of purchasing the tools that you'll need to do the service
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which there aren't really that many that you will need, your average wrench, ratchet and socket set
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and a couple filter wrenches will just about do any outboard that is on the market
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would really only take a person one day to learn how to completely service their engine
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With only a couple of YouTube videos and maybe a couple blog posts reads, anyone can learn
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what it needs to be done for their engine. Once you know what items and where they are that need to be changed, a lot of a service
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can actually be done while the boat is still in the water as well
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Utilizing your logging and scheduling, you'll have the ability to work in services throughout
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the year without having to turn it into an entire weekend or drawn-out process
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you and your boat on the water for longer periods of time throughout the season, which should
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be a goal for all of us when it comes to boating. We want to thank you for hanging out with us and we'll see you next week
