Thread: Pays to find a COMPETENT + HONEST boat motor mechanic

A good one might cost you but if they are truly good & honest both you're better off in the long run.

I did boat/motor repairs for 29 years and a few months.

I find that a lot of customers had their stuff at the local shade-tree mechanic's place, before coming to me.

Certified YouTube mechanics tell people how to fix stuff, but the majority of the time they don't tell the whole story. Then so-and-so up the road who's got a bit of a mechanical apitude thinks he can fix boat motors using the certified youtube mechanic's videos as his or her training. Adding insult to injury these shade-tree's don't have any kind of guarantee on their work. So they are being trained by subpar hack jobs that post because it makes them feel less worthless, and then pass that information onto everyone else, who takes it as the gospel truth. As a FACTORY trained tech, I can say with certainty that nothing beats experience combined with factory training. Big deal, right? Factory trained means they went to whatever town, partied, and called it a "school". No, that stuff is grueling. You learn, or you go home and pout because you failed, then move onto working on lawn mowers or something else that it easier for you to do. I paid that price a couple times a year from 1992 through 2020. In 2019, I was in DFW doing training there, I lived alone and had to pay a house-sitter to come take care of the animals and watch the house. She called me on day #4 (of 5) and said water came out of the garage door whenever she went to go in the house. Great, nobody there, no neighbors for a few miles...I told her just leave it alone, I'll deal with it when I get home. Exam day was day #5 so I had to be there. I did that, and hurried home-6 hour drive-to find that when she left the day before, she must have used the bathroom, the valve in the toilet didn't shut off, and she stumped the toilet...so it was overflowing, went everywhere. Every wall every ounce of flooring, etc-all junk. So the cost of that training went far beyond what the actual training cost. This one was thousands of dollars. If you have family, you're away from family for a week or two or however long, which is also a "cost". This is all why I keep preaching for online training. it costs the mfgr's less and costs the techs and dealers a lot less too.

I'm fortunate to have the place and knowledge to do all of it myself; although a lot of times I don't want to.