I keep a spreadsheet on my sonic and the repairs (for resale reasons). I took some time this weekend to analyze it and was a little shocked. My boat is a 1989 with 454's. Anytime something breaks I do fix it right and don't skimp by. In the last 2 seasons I have paid out $16,000 in repairs and replacements. About $3 grand of that was unnecessary replacements (nicer speakers etc), and 4 grand was covered by insurnace so in reality I have cashed out $9grand. Me and sara have had talks about upgrading boats down the road and I am just curious if newer boats carry yearly replacement cost like this. I would be hard pressed if I got in a 80k-120k and still had this much in repairs.

Now I did expect to have more in repairs for the first few years buying an older boat, but I am running out of things to replace also. Some quick math tells me that if we got a newer boat and the repairs were much much lower that I could afford to buy and finance a boat worth another $375 a month which means we could really afford to upgrade like.....now. Just me thinking out loud and wondering how newer 500's etc are on repairs. I am not miserable in my boat but we have decided something in the 38ft range is what we want in the future.

repair's it all depend's on how the boat is maintained and of course how hard you run it . even brand new boat's have stuff break .
im looking at buying a used 38 soon , so i can understand where u are coming from , i will have a survey done and motor's looked at but there's no guarantee that a few month's later something wont break .
i would say the best thing is when you do fix the boat that you have and you no it was done rite you have a better chance of it not breaking then buying something that someone else fixed to sell a boat you never no . but i guess that's all part of boating .

mike

No idea. I don't keep track. I don't really want to know. I would guess I have spent about 10-12K on maintenance and repairs over the last 3 years.

What motors you got 500's? Mine are 454's and have 400+hours on them. I just had my first motor problem this year when I found one motor hydrolocking. Replaced exhaust and pressure tested and everything seems to be holding well. I wish I would have bought a 38 and dumped all this money in it instead of the 31. Only thing I love about the 31 is the pull out bed. I have no clue why sonic didn;t put this on the larger models. I never sleep in my front bed we always use the pullout.

The pull out bed is a fantastic feature. I have filler cushions to make a second bed in my 38, but its just one more thing to haul. The 31 is more fun to drive though, and its not called the hardbody for nothing. The longer boats flex more, the 31 is a brick.
I have 496ho's. I wanted blue motors, but this boat had everything else I wanted and was near by, it just came together. A lot of money was spent replacing flaking powdercoat pieces, rub rail, fixing the ac controller, trailer brakes and tires, a lot of stuff not related to the engines. The HO's are nice motors.

Did the valve springs and head gaskets on my efi 500s at 300hr..No busted springs but they did need to be done..Found some other issues that made me happy that I did it when I did...

I have a 02 31 with 496 ho's 300hours and all I have done nock on wood is change fluid and filters. Pretty nice turn key and go. My friends with the big power are always turning wrenches under there engine hatches or replacing gear sets in their drives.

I blew 1 engine in july so I decided that it was time to do both I'm around 12k this year in the boat but with buying an 88 with 458hrs I was planning for repairs anyways and now I have 420hp 383s for next year

If you don't mind me asking what did you give for your 88?

I paid 14900 last oct it was a repo it had 320efi motors with alpha ss drives so for the price I figured I was going to have to spend a few bucks on it