Retrieving engine hours

Dec 13, 2006
56
Beneteau 323 Milwaukee
Yanmar 3YM 20 engine. Tachometer and fuel gauge work fine. Engine hours have not displayed for quite some time now. Searched the archives and see this is a common problem. Is there a way to determine how many hours are on the engine still? If so I would like retrieve them. I plan to just keep a log of engine hours after that.
 
Jan 7, 2011
5,354
Oday 322 East Chicago, IN
I doubt you can “resurrect” the hours from a broken meter…either it was counting hours while the engine was on or not.

It might be useful to know the brand of hours meter, but I don’t think it will change the outcome.

The wire connections may be corroded or something (and the meter itself isn’t bad). But in any case, if the meter didn’t get the signal, the time is essentially lost.

Greg
 
Feb 21, 2010
347
Beneteau 31 016 St-Lawrence river
Should this be the the B module from Yanmar, you may try to lightly twist the small quartz display, this should momentsrily show the engine hours.
You may then purchase a mechanical hourmeter plug it into a 12V source until it reaches the same as your display. Then wire it into the ignition circuit. Cheap & efficient.
 
Feb 10, 2004
4,090
Hunter 40.5 Warwick, RI
Yanmar, Volvo, and possibly others all have the problem you describe. On my Volvo the meter would periodically flash the engine we hours, and it was obvious that the hours were being counted, just not displaying.
I have installed a mechanic hour meter, but with an engine hours about 3500, it wasn't practical to run the mechanical meter up to the actual hour count. So I just record the mechanical reading and add it to the known hours previously.
There are published procedures to repair these meters, but they then start from 0 hours like th we mechanical.
 
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