One thing to keep in mind is that the engines in different vehicles are used in different ways. In my plane, engine age is determined in hours, as well, but part of the reason is that the engine and the props are always turning at a constant speed, with the amount of thrust being varied by changing the blade angle of the props as they spin through the air. In this case, engine hours are a pretty good indication of wear, since one hour is much like the next. In a car, to use engine hours as a measure of wear, you run up against the problem of not knowing whether a particular hour was spent idling, at part throttle, or at full throttle. Scott Gardner -----Original Message----- From: billsfanmd@xxxx [mailto:billsfanmd@xxxx] Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2003 3:10 PM To: dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [DML] delorean engines...miles or hours? Just a curious question about automobile engines. I know the standard way to tell how "used" an engine is is by the mileage. On our cars since many have sat, had broken angle drives or had sporadic periods of use I was wondering other ways to tell how much use an engine has had. Just like the way the car was treated the past 20 years shoud be more important then 81,82 or 83 I would think there are other ways to help judge an engines life. Since my brother is an avid boater they refer to an engines age by the "hours" it has logged. Which made me wonder which is truly more accurate, hours or miles??? Are there ways on an engine that measure things that may be more important then miles? Can you tell how many hours your engine has logged?..... Since I have a relativley high mileage car this tells me he simply drove it alot and it was well maintained to do so.... MikeC 2109