[Capt. Debbie]

Cool. I used to run charters out of Shark River Hills ( now Muni marina) and AP's in Belmar. Ran primarily, but did do fluke and blues offshore for tuna a shark. Ran from May to November for charters and some personal trips too. Boat was a 25' Grady with twin OMC' 200hp's. wasn't real fast- cruise 28-30k so my hours should have been higher than a faster boat. Bought boat with 318 hours. In 3 years I blew power head on one with about 1100 hours running time, an ruining my shark season charters while Bry's spent a month screwing around.

So I averaged 250- 300 hours per year. Most Rec guys don't near 100 hours a year. I don't know if your engine in 30 years old so I don't know what you averaged to get 4000 running hours(actually ignition "on" hours) . But that is EXTREME hours.

As far as no problems in 4000 hours, Sea Tow runs through engines like you change socks. They run pretty much 7 days a week. None of the two stroke 200's (Merc, Yamaha, EVinrude/Bombardier) have lasted more than 2000 hours. None. And there's no maintenance plan that will stop that except ceasing use. In fact the S/T Florida guys have news of 4 stroke SUzukis consistently running 4000 hours. That's big news.

My point is your engine is an aberation way way off of typical. That's a very good thing for you. But probably unlikely for anyone else to expect 4000+ hours of O/B engine's life.

Should put a post up - a poll. And see if anyone ever got even 3000 hours out of a large hp ( not 9.9hp) two stroke O/B. You'll see how luck you are.