hi all,long time no post

how many hours app. 500 efi engine can be used before rebuilt?

-pleasure boat

519 hours at 5000 RPM

Have had a few that had broken valve springs at 350-400

They ran excellent.....right up to that final moment!!!!!

Figure top end refresh's in the 200-300hr range and full rebuilds in the 500-600hr range.

Where have you been????

Hey stranger

My buddy just had Brad Smith rebuild his 2003 500EFI's. They had just under 300 hours on them. Brad said both motors were losing head gaskets so his timing was perfect on the rebuilds.

Perfect answer Brad. LOL

How was the rest of the motors?

If top end was done (with head gaskets) around the 250-300 can the bottom end go for another 250?

I know this is hard, depends 500 at 5000rpm's or 500 at 1500 rpms.

What would be a good way to know if you are ready for a rebuild? Leak down, compression test,???

I am at this point, I have about 40 hours on complete top end, motors run great, (320 hours) but may take them out to do some other work and trying to decide if I should go through them or just set them aside and drop them back in.

Brad said the rest of the motors looked fine. He had a compression and leak down test done in 2010 and everything looked good. However, I told him that he was still running the risk of breaking a valve spring so he decided to have the heads pulled. Then Brad convinced him to go 522's!! I think you could go 250 - 300 on heads and then run another 250 -300 before doing the bottom ends. We tease my buddy that his throttles could be replaced with an "ON/OFF" switch so his almost 300 hours were hard hours.