when do you service your boat?

i got an x-10 with 100 hours on it. last time i took it out the check engine light came on when we were finished riding.i checked the oil and it was low. these boats burn up oil quick. i was thinkin bout adding synthetic oil...anyone running this in their boat?

Jason,
Most manufactures recommend a 50 hour service interval. With only 100 hours on the boat, you have to expect the motor to use oil during the break in period. Me personally I would not just "add" Synthetic, you need to drain the oil, change the oil filter and run the oil that your motor manufacture recommends. I hear Synthetic is okay to use after 200+ hours on the motor.

thanks kevin

do you guys change your own oil? I usually do my own in my truck. but the enginge is inside the boat and i'm not sure how i could drain the oil with out getting it every where.

I have had good luck with the electric pumps. connected to the battery, with a thin tube down the dipstick tube. This gets probably 95% of the oil. The trick is getting the filter without spillage. I hacked up a plastic bottle to surround the filter during removal and it worked pretty well. The little spills were pretty easy to clean up. Course that was on a DD Supra, not a v-drive. Haven't tried that one yet.

Get a plastic bag and make sure it doesn't have any holes in it by blowing it up with air.Then just put it under and around the oil filter.

good ideas...thanks!

jason there is a drain that runs from the oil pan out the transom plug in the hull. Pull the plug run the drain hose into a bucket, drain the oil, change the filter, refill oil, and you're done.

Indmar also recomends changing the v-drive oil every 100 hrs and they are now saying to change the filter element as well. Replacement oil is 15w-40 and the filter can be found at your local dealer

Jason, have you changed the oil at all yet? Or will this be its first oil change, at 100 hrs?

Last I knew, the change interval on the tranny is 100 hrs, but the Vdrive is 500 hrs.

Oh, and do a search on "Tempo Oil Boy". Best way to change oil by far when used with an adapter to hook up to an oil pan drain hose.

Changing the oil on a boat is a little different than changing the oil in a car because you probably can't get to the bottom of the oil pan. There are three common solutions to this problem.

1) The engine can have an oil drain hose attached to the normal oil drain plug. Unfortunately, this has to be installed on the engine before the engine is installed in the boat so if you didn't get it with the boat it is probably too late. If you are in the market for a boat I would certainly get that option. You can slip the hose out a drain hole and let gravity work for you or you can attach a pump and suck the oil out.

2) It is common for the dip stick tube to extend low enough into the oil pan to be used. You can slip a medium sized tube (~3/8") OVER the dipstick tube, connect it to a pump and pump the oil out.

3) If for some reason the dip stick tube can not be used as a pipe then you can slip a small diameter tube down the inside of the tube. This method sucks, or perhaps better said, it doesn't suck very well! First off, the tube has to be fairly small to fit and it is a lot harder to pump oil through a small tube. Second, if you don't get the tube all the way down, or if it goes all the way down then curls back up you won't get all the oil.


Any above method will be easier if the oil is warm.

Don't most manufacturers suggest a 10 hour oil change at the first interval. Knowing boats it would scare me to death not to check the oil until the 100 hour mark. I usually check before each time the boat is put in the water.

I think the first engine oil change is 10 or 20 hrs, and then every 50 after that. If this boat is still on the factory oil at 100 hrs, I'm not surprised it's burning a lot of oil. The early first change is to get out all the metal shavings from break-in process. Going 100 hrs is not a good idea, but not nearly as big a deal on a motor that's already broken in.

I installed an oil drain hose on my old MC PS190 after I got it. Messy, but wasn't really a big deal.

no this is not the first oil change... I believe its the 2nd or 3rd. thanks for the tips everyone.

does ayone use synthetic oil? I was thinking about using this since it doesn't burn ...so i've heard.

yea or nea? I use fully synthetic in the truck for about 2 years now with no problems.
thanks in advance

I think you have been mislead about synthetic not burning. Mainly there are one of two ways the oil dissappears. Blows by the rings and out the exhaust or by the valve guides and out the exhaust. You can use synthetic just as easily as petroleum base oil. Improper break in generaly is the main cause of oil consumption. It could be a manufacturer defect also. There should be a manufacturer maximum oil consumption for a certain period. Get it taken care of while it is under warranty or the problem will be yours to deal with after the warranty is up and it will only get worse.