Looking at a boat with 496ho's but it has 700 hrs on both engines. The price is not really a "smoking deal" but it's one of the cleanest 2002 boats I've looked at just worried about that many hours. Looking for opinions

Raw water or closed cooling? Salt or fresh? And dont try to convince yourself the Chesapeke is fresh... and what kind of boat and previous driver. If you can get engines scanned, you can tell what percentage was full throttle and what throttle setting was driver's favorite. A shaft sportfish with closed cooling? Fine. A raw water Baja that was always driven like an Outer Limits? Not so much...

All 496HO's have closed cooling

700hr engines need to be priced as such. Well maintained, they could provide hundreds of additional hours of use. I'm at 545hrs. Parts replaced... IAC, Alternator, and starter.

Engines need scanned to check run time vs rpm intervals, fault history. Compression/leakdown test. Any service records/receipts?
Need to find out what has been replaced/serviced.

There are hundreds of threads on this forum concerning 496 maintenance and problem areas.

Agree with Ryan00TJ........

Hours are not the only indicator of condition. Maintenance records, ECM scan, compression test, etc, how many owners? 700 Hours on twin 496's sounds like they are strong runners and were used on a regular basis and probably have a lot of life left in them. It's the low hour, infrequent use ones that can be problematic and can have you chasing issues.

They are in a speed boat so def going to see if i can get them scanned also closed cooling and the boat was used in a freshwater lake. Talking to a broker who just says "well maintained" not sure how many owners or maintenance records.

ALL brokers say "well maintained". Are they ever gonna sell anything by saying "owner is an idiot who hammers this boat to death and thinks since they have antifreeze in the engines they dont need winterizing"... So 496HO arent like 525's that need top ends every 300 hours?

Nope. Give me 5 mins just looking externally and I can tell you if they are "well maintained". Pull the flame arrestor's. If the arrestors and tb are full of belt dust I would not call them well maintained. Generally the overall look of the engine bay can tell you alot. Check coolant in expansion tank. Is it bright orange and clean or dark orange and original?

If you are serious go for a test run. See how the engines run. Definately have the pcms scanned and hours/ faults logged.