Maintaining your boat’s engine ensures its good performance and durability.
Keeping your marine engine in perfect condition is essential for ensuring the safety and performance of your boat. To do this, we must carry out periodic inspections, as they will help us to detect small chips or faults that could grow into large and costly repairs.
Normally, it is advisable to check the engine every 100 hours of use for petrol engines and every 250 hours for marine diesel engines, or at least once a year, whether the boat is used semi-regularly or is stationary, in both cases, there are factors that could potentially reduce the life of the engine or may limit its reliability.
How is marine engine maintenance carried out?
Generally, the maintenance of engines, regardless of their make, includes the following tasks:
- Start the engine to detect operating anomalies such as abnormal noises, vibrations, smoke colour, among other possible faults. This is where a skilled mechanic makes a difference.
- Check shaft alignment and gland packing.
- Check oil and coolant levels to detect possible oil and coolant leaks.
- Check fuel lines for cracks or leaks.
- Check the condition of the fuel inside the tanks (contamination by sludge, sediment or water).
- Check and replace engine anodes (coolers).
- Check the condition of belts and filters and inspect moving parts.
- It is also important to ensure that the battery is charged and in good condition, and to replace it if necessary, as a discharged battery can cause serious engine problems, posing a danger to safe sailing.
From these basic tasks, each manufacturer has its recommendations and peculiarities depending on its technical characteristics, therefore, we are going to focus on some of the differential aspects of the most popular, quality and reliable brands on the market:
Volvo Penta marine engines:
This brand offers a maintenance programme called “Volvo Penta Care” that helps owners plan and schedule maintenance for their engines. They suggest a basic service is recommended after 250 hours of use on a diesel engine or 100 hours on a petrol engine, or once a year, whichever occurs first.
Yanmar marine engines:
Yanmar has a maintenance programme called “Yanmar Service Care”, in which they suggest an interval maintenance programme: first 50 hours, 250 hours, 500 hours and 750 hours, or at one-year intervals, whichever comes first.
Mercury Mercruiser Marine Engines:
They offer a similar program called “Mercury Product Protection” which also covers certain expenses caused by defects in materials and repairs after the Mercury Limited Warranty has expired. Mercury outboard maintenance services are every 100 hours or one year (basic) and every 300 hours of operation or 3 years (extended).
In conclusion, the maintenance of our engine cannot be a one-off thing, regardless of the brand of engine it is, if we have a Volvo Penta, Mercury or Yanmar marine engine, it is important to be consistent and let the professionals check the engine of the boat annually, following the recommendations and specifications of each manufacturer, to ensure that it is always in optimum condition.
