About

About this site

Folsom Mobile Boat Repair is an independent referral and advertising service for mobile marine work around Folsom Lake, California. It is not a boat repair company, and this page explains what that means in practice.

What we are and what we are not

This site does not fix boats. There is no boat, no shop, no trailer, and no mechanic on staff. What there is: a phone number that connects you with local mobile marine mechanics who work the Folsom Lake area, and a set of pages written to be genuinely useful about boats in this specific place.

The mechanics carry their own insurance, hold their own licenses, set their own prices, and do their own scheduling. When you book a visit, your agreement is with them. If the work is good, that is their credit. If something is wrong with it, they are who you take it up with, and any reputable one would rather hear about it than not.

The reason to be this blunt on a page most people skip is simple. Plenty of sites in this line of business dress themselves up as the repair shop, invent a name and an address, and hope you never look closely. That makes it impossible to tell what you are actually calling. This one tells you up front, which costs us nothing and lets you decide with the facts in hand.

Why there are no reviews here

You will not find testimonials, star ratings, team photos, an address, or a founding year on this site. Not because we could not type them, but because every one of them would be fabricated.

A referral service has no crew to photograph and no shop to put on a map. Any "serving Folsom Lake since 1994" line here would be a decoration. Any five star review would be something someone made up. Both are common on sites like this, and both are worthless to you, because a review you cannot verify tells you nothing except that the person who built the site knows what reviews are supposed to look like.

What is here instead is the kind of thing you can check against reality: real local labor and trip rates, the actual tradeoff between a come-to-you mobile mechanic and a haul-in shop, and honest scope about what a mobile mechanic can and can't do. If any of that turns out to be wrong, that is a fair thing to hold against us. It seemed a better trade than a page of invented praise.

How this is paid for

The mechanics compensate us for referring callers. You pay nothing to this site, and the referral does not add anything to the price you are quoted.

That arrangement has an obvious bias built into it, so it is worth naming rather than hiding. We are paid when you call, which creates a pull toward telling everyone their boat urgently needs work. Where that pull got resisted is visible on the pages themselves. The won't-start page says a boat that won't start is usually a cheap fix, stale fuel or a dead battery, not the dead engine people brace for. The cost page publishes real ranges instead of "call for pricing," and refuses to put a flat number on powerhead and transom jobs because an honest price needs a teardown first. A referral site that sends mechanics out on calls that waste everyone's time does not last, because the mechanics stop answering.

The phone number

The number on this site is a tracking number. It rings through to a mobile marine mechanic working the Folsom Lake area, and the tracking is how the mechanic knows where the call came from. It is not a call center. Calls may be recorded for that purpose. California requires both parties to consent to recording, so if a call is recorded you hear an announcement at the start and can decline. We do not sell your number, add it to a list, or hand it to several companies who all call you back. More on that is on the how it works page.

What is not covered

The mechanics here are mobile marine mechanics. They handle what is mechanical and can be done where the boat sits: engine and motor repair on inboard, outboard, and sterndrive setups, no-start and on-water breakdowns, electrical, fuel, batteries, outdrive and lower-unit service, impeller and cooling work, tune-ups, and winterizing and spring commissioning. So nobody's trip gets wasted, here is what they do not do:

• Haul-out. Pulling the boat out of the water and putting it on stands. That is a boatyard's job.
• Hull, fiberglass, and gelcoat. Cracks, structural repair, and cosmetic glass work are a different trade.
• Bottom paint. Antifouling and bottom jobs happen at a yard, not at your slip.
• Trailer repair. Bearings, axles, lights, and frames are not marine engine work.
• Boat sales. This is not a dealer and does not buy or sell boats.
• Detailing and upholstery. Cleaning, waxing, and canvas or seat work are outside the scope.

If your problem is structural or cosmetic rather than mechanical, an honest mechanic will tell you that on the phone instead of driving out to look at something they cannot do at your slip. The home page lays out the mobile side, and the FAQ covers the maintenance questions.

About the prices

The ranges on this site are typical Folsom Lake area numbers, published so you have a reference point before you call. Mobile marine labor runs about $110 to $175 per hour plus a trip fee around $95. A raw-water impeller runs about $260 to $500, an annual service or tune-up about $400 to $600 per engine plus parts, and a sterndrive outdrive service anywhere from $220 to $1,000 or more depending on scope. They are not quotes and they cannot be. Nobody can price your boat without knowing the engine and what is actually wrong. If a quote comes back outside a range you read here, ask why. There is usually a real answer, and it is usually the engine, the access, or how long the problem was left.

Mechanics

If you run a licensed mobile marine business around Folsom Lake and want to talk about the calls from this site, the number on this page reaches us too. We would rather work with a few good mechanics who show up and diagnose honestly than route calls to whoever answers first.