help! I broke my gas auger!

[DaveyG]

I have a Jiffy 2hp gas auger with a Tecumseh engine. I broke it while trying to start it last night. I was pulling on the cord to start it and then it suddenly lost resistance. It's like I can feel the cord is not engaging with the engine. The cord still retracts, though. When I peeked inside the engine, it looks like the cord rotates this little black plastic piece which is somehow supposed to connect to the engine and turn it over, but it looks like I snapped something off that black plastic piece. Anyone know what the piece is called? where I can buy a replacement? can I replace this myself or do I need special tools?

thanks

[eyehunter]

I had this very same problem happen to my strikemaster a couple of weeks ago. It turned out that it was just frozen, see that little black piece is supposed to move up or down when you pull the cord and then it engages to start the motor. Well all that was wrong was that it had been in the back of the truck one day when it was raining and then we got a cold snap and that little black piece had gotten frozen. If you haven't already, try bringing it in the house and thawing it out and see if that makes a difference. It worked for me, hope it does for you too.

[DaveyG]

I'll take a look at it when I get home today. I brought it inside last night. But I'm doubtful that's the problem, because it was engaging the first few times I pulled it last night. I would have had to have frozen in the 3 seconds between pull number 3 and pull number 4.

[eyehunter]

Mine got stuck after the second pull. At least it doesn't cost anything to warm it up and try it.

[dovix]

If there was some gunk frozen on the shaft, it might not have hung up on the first pull or two, but on the third you might have tugged it a tiny bit harder and it hung on you. Hopefully warming it up will free it, take a look at the shaft and see if you can slide the cord winder up and down, once it's freed up a shot of an appropriate lube might help. I'm not sure what that "appropriate lube" might be, but......

Good luck.

[Cliff Wagenbach]

Try spraying the shaft with a little WD-40.

Cliff

[Zzapp]

Good advice, Cliffy!

"If it moves, but isn't supposed to: duct tape. If it doesn't move but should: WD-40."

the handyman's secret weapons

[scot]

The plastic part is supposted to be conected to the bottom of the cover. mine is a strick master and it broke had to replace

it.

[DaveyG]

I took another look at it when I got home today and made a phone call to a service center. It looks like I broke the plastic piece as I feared. I believe I pulled too hard when trying to start it yesterday and broke the starter pulley. That's the plastic piece that has the rope wrapped around it and engages and turns the flywheel when you pull the rope. Now I need to find the part and attempt to replace it. If anyone else has ever had to replace this part, I'd love to hear about your experience.

[jltimm]

Actually the same thing happened to me.My plastic piece had chipped,but still worked so I called strikemaster, and they sent out the piece in no time! Then I ended up working close to Big Lake and brought the powerhead in and the part to Strikemaster. They fixed it right then and there in no time and said, "anything else!" Awesome Customer Service!

[DaveyG]

I thought I'd post any update on my progress in case anyone else every has this problem with a Jiffy auger. I called Jiffy and using my phone number the automated customer service recommended the three closest authorized Jiffy service centers. So I called up the place nearest my house called River Lake Small Engines and they had the part. It costs $9.95 and I'm going there to get it right now. Also, through some internet searching I found a maintenance guide for TC 300 engines. That's the model of Tecumseh engine in my auger. The url is http://www.cpdonline.com/694782.pdf

[McGurk]

Do a search in the Equipment-Expert Information forum for the last year for these words: +Strikemaster +recoil. This has been discussed there repeatedly (It happened to me, too!) and you should find a wealth of Info on your repair.

[DaveyG]

It took a few hours of working on it, but I was able to replace the starter pulley and the auger works great now. The hardest part was taking the cover off the engine. The manual I have says that all I have to do is remove one nut that connects the fuel tank to a bolt on the engine cover and then remove the fuel tank before unscrewing the other bolts and removing the engine cover. Well, there's a lot more holding the fuel tank on to the engine than just that one nut. I never did figure out hold to get the fuel tank off. I ended up cracking the little plastic loop that extends off the fuel tank and loops over the bolt on the engine cover. Then I could unscrew the bolt underneath it to remove the engine cover. Though this technique did "break" the little plastic loop, it still works fine and you wouldn't realize that I broke it if you looked at it. And I didn't have to remove the fuel tank. After I got the engine cover off, I just followed the instructions in the manual with a couple of exceptions. The manual says to remove the pin holding the rope in the handle and release the rope and let the starter pulley spin and release the tension in the spring. I waited until I took the cover off to do that so I could control how fast that spinning happened. Also, I notice that there was only about 1 rotation of tension in the starter pulley when I released it, so when I put the new one on, I only gave it one rotation of tension. The manual said 1 3/4 to 2 1/2 rotations, and that seemed like too much to me.