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First time poster here. My name is Mike and I hail from the Beautiful PNW I am looking at purchasing a 2004 275 Conquest. It has twin Merc Optimax 200 XL's. I'll be using it in the ocean for salmon, tuna, and bottom fish! Also the Puget sound for cruising and salmon fishing. Possibly some diving and squidding. Also in the Columbia river for salmon as well. Probably a few overnight trips in the San Juans. I do have a couple questions.
Mainer78,
Does the boat or engines have an hour meter? Otherwise 13 year old salt water used outboards are on borrowed time in my opinion. My buddy just replaced a 250 Merc Verado on his 10 year old fresh water used Ranger Bass Boat. He has been boating for 30 years and maintains a boat well, yet the block somehow got cracked. Fully rigged price was $20K for one motor. So, if anything happens to those outboards you might as well buy another boat as many times it will be cheaper than repowering. Better off valuing the boat for a hull only and then adding say $2500 each motor as that is roughly what they would be worth for trade in if there has been no catastrophic failure.
The hours are very low for a boat of that age. As long as it was properly flushed I would believe their should be plenty of life left in them. I do not have personal experience with those engines but I do have plenty of outboard experience. They best way to check them out is to run a compression check on each cylinder and then have them run even on muffs at idle and see how they behave. Most outboard problems that are costly seem to show more symptoms at idle and shifting in and out of gear in the form of idling and sputtering. That is because at higher RPM's the motor will advance timing or try to deliver more or less fuel to compensate for costly problems like scored cylinder walls or slightly squashed pistons from over heating. Ditto for any test drive. Getting engine up to different RPM's is important, but I spend quite a while idling around the harbor or up and down a channel when I am testing an outboard.
