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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.
Each vehicle has a usage tracking setting:
- Go to the vehicle detail page
- Click Edit to open Vehicle Settings
- Under Usage Tracking, choose:
- Distance (odometer) — the default for most types, and what every existing vehicle uses (a new ATV, UTV / SxS, Boat or Snowmobile starts on hours)
- Hours (hour meter) — for hour-metered equipment
- If the vehicle has both, tick Also track engine hours
- Set Current Hours to the reading on the meter today
- Click Save Changes
Existing vehicles are unaffected — they stay on distance until you change them.
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.
| 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 gal/hr or L/hr |
| Cost per mile / per km | Cost per hour |
A dual-tracking vehicle sees both tabs and both sets of figures.
Tires on an hours vehicle track the hour meter too (see Tires).
- Go to the vehicle detail page
- Open Maintenance → Engine Hours
- Click Add Reading
- Enter the date and the hours shown on the meter
- Optionally add notes
- 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.
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 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 averages are total fuel (or cost) over total hours, not a mean of each tank's figure, and they leave towing tanks out.
The distance-based cost-per-mile figure is hidden on these vehicles rather than shown as a misleading zero.
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.
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.
- 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.