There is a 91 javelin bass boat in my area with a 200 hp jonson. It doesnt say much but 1 bad cylinder. How much in repairs $$$ wise does one bad cylinder equate to?

By the way i caught a 38lbs bass the other day but nobody saw it and Im catch and release only. thanks guys

I'm guessing you're looking at a full rebuild and that's not cheap.

Depends on "bad" and how bad. You would have to pull the head access the damage. Figure about $3,500 to have a reman'd powerhead droped on. $1,500 to have that one pulled off, bored and new pistons installed, but not much in other new parts. Somebody that know what they're doing can pull the head and intake, go through the intake, pull the bad piston out hone it and put another one in if it' just melted one and only did minor damage to sleeve for a few hundered bucks. These are all based on the the fact the block is good and the motor is rebuildable. If you have a shop repair it, look to spend $2,000 to $4,000

look online for rebuilt powerheads...( www.iboats.com is one place)...

alot of the time there is not huge differences in rebuilding and replacing.

having one bad cylinder says to me it is likely the boat was run hard and maybe not maintained as well as it should have been. I would worry about blowing another cylinder ...thus the comments on replacing or completely rebuilding.

The rebuild that someone told me I needed for my 60 horse Johnson was about $1600

( turns out my 60 horse is SUPPOSED to have low compression on its center cylinder...it is a delimited 70 horse they made into a 60 by limiting the center cyliners compression...glad I check with Johnson first!)

I would be betting that a faulty VRO pump was the culprit. If you get it, I'd disconnect the VRO altogether and premix.

But as old as the boat is, It had better be an absolute steal of a deal for me to consider a motor that needed rebuilt.

Actually, I've got a powerhead to fit that motor I will sell you for $800.  If runs good, acutally very good, but has a little skirt tick where it has used pistons in it.  Would probably make you a good motor for a couple of seasons until you could find a good used motor or get yours rebuilt.   The bad part about this power head is it's has to be run on 91/93 octane makes about 275 HP and you would need to know how to jet carbs to tune it for your boat.  Plus shipping would cost about $200, depending on where you are.

Oh, and if the VRO went out, it would most likely have more than one bad cylinder, the motor would probably be junk.

a bit off topic commentary on VRO's

VRO failures are not as common as most mechanics would have everyone believe. The old man who does the work on my boat and used to be a Johnson Service Tech trainer ( he trained Johnson service guys when Johnson still did factory training) said that this is a hold over from the days when gas used to have alcohol in it. The alcohol dried the diaphrams. He said it just does not happen like it used to...and most mechanics look to the VRO first when they should be looking elsewhere. He also said it is also the default answer mechanics used when they have no damned idea what is wrong.

When my alarm was going off...I was told by 4 places my VRO was bad...I took it to him and he immediately opened my oil tank and pulled the oil float out...it was satuarated with oil and sticking in the alarm position...he replaced the oil float for $14 and AMAZING...the alarm quit going off.

He said most marine service places would have changed the VRO...and then found the bad oil float after when the alarm was STILL going off and changed it...and your bill would likely have just been for the VRO...and they would make you feel like they did you a favor by giving you a new oil float for free...when all you actually needed was the $14 oil float in the first place.

So you just paid $450 for a $14 dollar repair...because too many mechanics automatically assume the VRO is the culprit.