Trolling with Yamaha 150 twins

[Lowlysubaruguy]

Im new to Outboards short of 20 HP or smaller units.
When trolling with twin outboards would you alternate engines to or spread the usage or would you pick one and let one engine take the wear over the other. Myself I throw a lot of hypotheticals into the mix. I have right and left hand drives. I’m assuming the left hand unit will be more money to fix or replace down the road but thats just a thought. The other is I would rather have one engine with more hours than the other 10 15 years from now, theory being one engine starts to show its age or breaks down before the other one giving me less of a chance of having two failures at one time and also maybe allowing me to replace one and then the other a few years later to spread the cost out but I work on cars and logic and theories are just that, I see well maintained cars with major failures and total abused crap that is exactly the same powertrain with 3000K on the clock and no major failures so none of that matters if it is just down to luck.

The salmon are here I’m optimistic my aging new boat might get a little run time this year.

 

[ThomW]

I guess that's really a matter of personal preference. Keep them with the same hours--about...or have one with more hours, but at a low speed. Why not just get a smaller kicker motor for it and then you don't have to choose!! :lol::lol:

 

[mr 88]

Have 3 boats with twin inboards and I try to keep the hours about the same. Not always easy as one set has a rebuilt motor ,which I will troll on whenever possible to get those hours closer to the original. Sometimes the wind ,waves and direction of troll dictate which engine to troll on. Say your trolling into the waves at a 45* angle and the wind is hitting your hull on the opposite side. One engine is going to have better control ,just think of a Bobcat /bulldozer with tracks , if you just engage one side its going to want to steer/move to the opposite direction . Personally if I was buying a boat I would prefer the hours to be about the same , unless one was rebuilt , replaced for whatever reason.

 

[mr 88]

Usually the engines rotate the same direction and the transmission will reverse one of the drive shafts , so the cost is the same to rebuild the engine and drive unit. They started doing that in the late 70s.

 

[dingbat]

Applying automotive scenarios to marine engines are apples to oranges

Marine motors die by “other means” long before they wear out

I troll twins on the hour meter. Eight hour trip, 4 hours on each engine.

After roughly 1157 hours, engine hours varying by less than 1%

 

[mr 88]

One possible problem with replacing one OUTBOARD then years later the other is finding one that is of the same vintage ,controls , power [compression numbers ] The way outboards evolve you may have a 4 stroke and two banger hanging on the transom when the second one lets go.

 

[Lowlysubaruguy]

Thanks All good pointers Ill probably balance the hours out as much as possible. Its going to get a little run time over the next week a lot of it will be trolling. It hasn’t seen much water to date which I knew when I bought it, my future in this boat starts in a couple years.