Engine Hours Tracking

Engine Hours Tracking

Not every vehicle measures its life in distance. Tractors, generators, ATVs, side-by-sides, boats and equipment run on an hour meter, and servicing them "every 5,000 miles" makes no sense. MyGarage can track engine hours instead of (or alongside) an odometer, with the same features distance tracking gets: history, service records, reminders, fuel efficiency and analytics.

Choosing How a Vehicle Is Measured

Each vehicle has a usage tracking setting:

1. Go to the vehicle detail page
2. Open Vehicle Settings
3. Under Usage Tracking, choose:
   • Distance (odometer) — the default, and what every existing vehicle uses
   • Hours (hour meter) — for hour-metered equipment
4. If the vehicle has both, tick Also track engine hours
5. Set Current Hours to the reading on the meter today
6. Click Save Changes

Existing vehicles are unaffected — they stay on distance until you change them.

Dual tracking

Some vehicles genuinely have both. A truck with a PTO, an RV with a generator, or a boat with a trip log all clock hours and distance. Tick Also track engine hours on a distance vehicle (or the reverse) and MyGarage keeps both sets of readings, showing you both tabs.

What Changes When a Vehicle Tracks Hours

Distance vehicle	Hours vehicle
Odometer sub-tab	Engine Hours sub-tab
Reminders due at a mileage	Reminders due at an hour reading
Fuel economy in MPG or L/100km	Fuel rate in GPH or L/hr
Cost per mile / per km	Cost per hour

A dual-tracking vehicle sees both tabs and both sets of figures.

Recording Hour Readings

1. Go to the vehicle detail page
2. Open Maintenance → Engine Hours
3. Click Add Reading
4. Enter the date and the hours shown on the meter
5. Optionally add notes
6. Save

Readings build a history exactly like odometer readings do, and the most recent one becomes the vehicle's current hours.

Readings can also arrive automatically: entering engine hours on a fuel fill-up or a service visit records a reading too, so the history stays current without double entry.

Hours-Based Reminders

On an hour-metered vehicle, reminders can be due at an hour reading rather than a date or a mileage — "service the mower deck at 250 hours". Create the reminder as usual and choose the hours interval; MyGarage compares it against the latest reading and alerts you the same way it does for distance.

Fuel and Cost on Hour Meters

Fuel economy in miles per gallon is meaningless for a generator. On an hour-tracked vehicle MyGarage reports:

• Fuel rate — gallons per hour (gal/hr) or litres per hour (L/hr) on metric ones
• Cost per hour — running cost per hour of operation

The distance-based cost-per-mile figure is hidden on these vehicles rather than shown as a misleading zero.

Analytics

The vehicle Analytics page adds two charts for hour-metered vehicles:

• Engine Hours Efficiency Trend — fuel rate over time
• Engine Hours Accumulated — how the meter has climbed

See Analytics for the rest of the reporting.

Exports

Hour readings export to CSV from the Engine Hours tab, and engine hours ride along on fuel and service exports. Hours are dimensionless, so unlike distance and volume they are never unit-converted — the value in the file is the value on the meter. See Fuel Tracking → Exporting Fuel Data.

Notes

• Fuel records have no separate hours field of their own beyond the engine hours you enter on the fill-up.
• Switching a vehicle from distance to hours does not delete its odometer history — the readings stay, they're just no longer the vehicle's primary measure.