New engine in the boat, how can i reset the engine hours on the speedometer?

dlogvine

Master Chief Petty Officer
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May 4, 2015
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I just installed a brand new (or newly rebuild) engine and outdrive on the Baja boat hull I recently bought. The hour meter build in the speedometer shows a lot of hours (I think over 2300 hours). Is there any way to reset this hour meter to reflect hours for the new engine? It looks like it is a digital speedometer/hour meter. If not, I'll just stick a separate new hour meter in the engine compartment.
Thank you
 

Scott Danforth

Grumpy Vintage Moderator still playing with boats
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Jul 23, 2011
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buy a new gauge

or simply do like they do for cars. put a sticker somewhere that says new engine installed at X date with Y hours on clock
 

Old Ironmaker

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Dec 28, 2015
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Not really fair to a future buyer to reset the hours to zero. The engine life is zero not the vessel and everything that comes with it. It is illegal in Ontario Canada to reset a vehicles odometer to zero when a new engine is swapped out. Since not all marine vessels have hour meters I'm not sure about the legality of doing it for boats.


A separate digital hour meter is the right thing to do here or save a few bucks and do what Scott suggests above. That will work if you make it a permanent badge.
 
Last edited:

ahicks

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Sep 16, 2013
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My vote - add an engine hour meter and use the one that's there now for total time on boat.
 

Old Ironmaker

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My vote - add an engine hour meter and use the one that's there now for total time on boat.

Yep. I could have used hundreds of letters more to say the same thing. It's not that my posts are too long it's that I can type fast with 2 fingers, sometimes more and then edit it 10 times.
 

matt167

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Sep 27, 2012
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the hours are stored on a flash rom chip IIRC same as older cars with digital odo. They can be changed with hacking but it will only allow odd digits due to the way you have to write them.. But yeah, just add another hour meter somewhere.
 

dlogvine

Master Chief Petty Officer
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May 4, 2015
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I got a new hour meter and will keep an old tachometer since it is a part of the set and I looked for the prices on the matching one and they are quite expensive and rare. So as you advised I'm putting a separate hour meter on the engine.
 
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