Anyone seen one of these Strikemaster augers?

We had some friends over to the house and the topic of ice fishing came up one of the girls mentioned that she had a gas auger, “the kind that you have to mix 10 to 30 parts of gas or something for.” Since I am still rocking a $10 mora hand auger I told her that I would love to see if I could get it running and maybe buy it from her. Below are pictures of what she dropped off. (The stuff on it is just snow).

Has a Strikemaster box, the whole thing is blue, and it appears that the motor was made in Japan.

The SN tag says:
TAS MOTOR
NO P-727924 (The “P-7” are painted in black, and the “27924” are stamped in the metal)

It has a 7” blades and the whole thing is in pretty darn good cosmetic shape – either it was well taken care of, or not used much. I noticed a little rust in the gas tank. I gave it a small pull just to see that there was compression, but I didn’t have time to look at it thoroughly, and I didn’t want to do anything that might push crap around its insides or mess something up.

This thing looks awesome and if it could be made useable I would love to have it on the ice.

Advice moving forward?

You should call Strikemaster on this one. They have a bit of a museum in their service department that details the evolution of the Strikemaster auger. They’d be thrilled to hear you have a bit of history in your hands. Ask for Mike Katchmark.

Never seen anything like it. Pretty cool looking.

Looks very cool also looks like something you would see on a cement construction site.

Wow I have not seen one of those in years, a Tanaka motor is a sweet runner.

I would take the gas tank off and flush it out real good, check the fuel lines to make sure they are not brittle and maybe add a fuel filter in the line to catch any gunk. Filler it up with a fresh mix of good gas, Amsoil, and Seafoam mixed at 50 to 1 and go to drilling some holes!!!!

You may need to take the carb apart and clean it but other than that if it has spark and compression your good to go!!!

the stories that thing could tell !

My Grandfather had a couple of those back in the 70’s. He used one almost everyday in the winter on Coon Lake. Not positive, but I think he got them at Sylvesters Salvage up in East Bethel for around $40 a piece. He had to tinker with them a little to get them to run, but then they ran great! I might have to go look, but I bet my Grandma still has one in her garage.

I called Strikemaster and they said that if it needed parts I would need to go to D-Rock. The guy there said that he could go over the whole thing, replace the lines, plug, add a filter, etc for about $55.

I told the girl who owns it that I wanted to get it fixed and she said I could just have it. $55 for a sweet retro auger seems like money well spent. Too bad I won’t have it for the GTG.

Another somewhat fortunate thing is that it looks like it takes 7″ mora blades – which is what my hand auger is. If needed, I already have a brand new set of blades ready to go.

That’s neat! Did they know the age on it?

you should take a video of the first holes you drill with that thing. curious to see it in action, and i bet strikemaster would like a copy of that video too. could probably even get a hat or something out of the deal.

If you get it running, you’ll like it much. Used to have one. The levee district bought 2 or 3 of them a long time ago when the Iowa river would get ice jams and they used the augers to drill holes in the ice for laying charges to bust the jams. Gave mine away because you couldn’t find parts for them this far south and this was before the internet.

You mean the internet wasn’t always here? Cool auger though.

Do you know how old Herb is…. He’s voted for like 35 of our presidents.

What cool find! I hope you get it running. I wonder if there are vintage auger shows like the sled guys have?

Mike Katchmark from Strikemaster thought that it was “about 30 years old” and didn’t have any more info. I wish there was a way to get a more accurate history. I’ll know in a couple days if it will live again – I don’t have time right now to tackle it myself.

Yours looks in better shape than the one I had which came to me in the mid 70’s.
Behave Kooty

That’s a sweet lookin auger, i don’t recall ever seeing one like that, even back in the day

My brother had that unit with the earth auger. Late 70’s – cool find!

did you get a parts diagram on the tas auger you posted about? what was the name and city of the shop you were going to have it fixed at?

D-Rock – ROCKS!!!

Highly recommended!

Do you still have this? I am looking for one was wondering If you would be intrested in selling it

Daniel wrote:

Do you still have this? I am looking for one was wondering If you would be intrested in selling it

Daniel, this post is 8 years old. I would suggest sending the o.p. a private message.

My dad had bought the tas auger in 1978,it was about 2 yrs old when he bought it from a friends widow.They were light for the era and cut pretty fair,butI remember it being tough to start and very touchy with the fuel mix,if I remember it was like 35:1.

I had one sweet but as soon as it starts it pretty much is turning the tanks cracked and cost more than the thing was worth.