Is a 496 a good engine? Are they reliable? Someone told me the will burn oil. Thanks for the help in advance.

Mine, which was built in Sept. 2003, has 320 hours on it and has never touched a drop of oil.

The merc 502's all burned oil especailly the carbed versions. The 496, haven't heard that.

Mine is an 02 model with 600+ hours on it. Runs great yet.

The marinized 496's don't burn oil, but the truck ones do. My Merc 496 HO's never use a drop but the 8.1 in my Avalanche does a quart about every 1000-1500 miles.

Go figure.....

02 496 mag 346 hours douesnt burn oil, runs strong! Just do your maintenance...

Got a buddy with an 8.1 in a 'burb and same thing, uses over a quart of oil between oil changes.

My old boat had the 496HO with 420 hrs. Never had any issues, turn the key and go.

The 496-8.1L Gen 7 engine is the most reliable BBC marine engine ever produced by GM. This fact is based on the numbers produced between 2000 and 2010 reported to be over 60,000 units. Thousands are in regular and performance boats all over the world and most all have seen and continue to see many long reliable hours for this fresh water cooled engine. With proper service and maintenance most stock 496's and even the Raylar upgraded engines see already over 750 hours with many over 1000 hours and still going strong.
The reason some of the bad raps this engine gets in the performance boat community come from the fact that early in its life between 2000-2004 the only upgrades for the stock 496 -8.1L engines were supercharger systems that when placed on stock block 496's would see a good quantity of engine failures caused mostly because of improper or no re-tuning the engines needed for supercharging and engine systems not properly prepared for supercharging.
The easily created detonation with the engine when supercharged would break the hypereuctectic pistons and sometimes grenade the engine. In 2004 when Raylar began producing our bolt on reliable engine kits for the engine that produced better power numbers normally aspirated the available performance upgrades for the engine became reliable and hundreds now enjoy this engine with more power as well as the thousnds of other performance boaters who continue to see wondeful reliability and extended hours from the stock 496's.
I have commercial 496 -8.1L users who have these engines with over 2000 hours of continuous failure free operation. Sure there are 496-8.1L marine engine owners and users who had failures and issues but if you plot those numbers against the total number of these engines in the market you will see they are a very tiny percentage! There are no perfect families of marine engines, even the highly regarded Mercury Racing engines suffer failures in percentages larger than the 496-8.1L marine engine family.

Don't get yourself internet over-sensitized to engines and their supposed problems, do your research and you will find that the rumors and short knowledge comments are usually without real detailed factual basis and improper maintenance, use and service were in many times the cause of failures!
Don't always blame the engine, sometimes the blame lays elsewhere.
Again, don't always believe all the so called internet experts on the reliability of this or many other marine engines.
When it comes to this engine, I can honestly call myself one of the foremost experts on the 496-8.1L and I can honestly say that this is a great marine engine and it does not in anyway deserve some of the cheap shots thrown at it on the net and in the boating community mostly from non 496-8.1L owners!
Sorry, but these rumor comments really get me ruffled!

Hope you have great experiences with whatever marine engine you purchase and use!

Best Regards,
Ray @ Raylar

Ray, I don't see one negative comment here on the 496 . I am glad that I got rid of mine in favor of a 525 EFI though, even though it had been trouble free.