Customer Reviews for Southland 43cc Earth Auger Powerhead with 8 in. Bit

I bought this because renting one was only $50 dollars cheaper. So why not pay a little extra and own one. I have to say that I am surprised by how well this works. It was easy to put together and is easy to run. It also has more power than I expected. Well worth the money!

Meet my expectations. My soil is heavy clay. Work very nice up two feet. Try the extension to get up to three feet but is really hard to pull it out. The motor is small but powerful enough, just need to pull it out continuously.

Does a great job and easy for one person to work.

You could probably identify me more as an aspiring DIYer, planning/preparing/dreaming. Learning to execute is my current role. Positive: it was easy to put together, easy to understand the directions for use, and relatively easy to handle for one person. Fun actually :) I have more projects in the future, that I can plan better knowing what I do now. Neutral/Negative: The Auger was purchased for a smaller job, but as a single mom with very little time, I had hoped this would be a time & labor saver. Unfortunately, it was not. Not by the products fault, I read reviews and watched videos but had more or less hoped it would be a lot bigger help then it was. I live in an area I am NOW understanding used to be a river bed. So there weren't many softer spots to dig. At least 75% of my post digging project involved manually digging up rocks with a tamper bar (GREAT INVESTMENT) and a slim head shovel with a longer grip (mine was old & solid & heavy, but it worked great). There were also a couple holes near ugly overgrown shrubs that left nasty roots underground, the auger DID NOT budge when it came into contact with that root system. What I learned: That all being said, to get the best use out of this handy little fella, I recommend.. 1. knowing or having a more solid idea (not a guess like i did) of what your ground consists of 2. don't gun the power, drill slower, more deliberate (if that makes sense) because that helps the bit to pull up rocks it has loosened. make sure you follow the directions on how to run this tool. don't just bear down, you have to push down & pull it back up to pull the loose dirt & rocks out of the hole. 3. have a tamper bar & slimmer shovel 4. have a person willing to help, if you want to get thru this sort of project quickly. 5. don't give up :)

The drill is easy to use but not as effective as a two handed Auger. You constantly have to stop to use a pole digger to take out some leftover dirt.

Having a few hundred feet of fence line and lots of yard projects, you come to need a good post hole digger if you want to save your back and time. This 43cc model from Southland fits all my needs for hole digging and then some. Out of the box it assembles quickly. You need to attach the centering bit to the auger (it screws on by hand) and then you attach the auger to the powerhead with one bolt. All wrenches needed are included. You'll get three open end wrenches for the larger bolts and two allen hex wrenches for the small hex head bolts and even a spark plug wrench. They were also kind enough to toss in a small bottle of premix oil to add to a gallon of gas. When they say everything is included, they mean it. The centering bit and auger bit remove for sharpening or replacement. Starting the engine is super easy. Turn on the choke, prime the bulb six time and pull. VROOM, it's off and running. The throttle has a nice sized trigger and it's smooth enough to use with one finger. This thing digs like a champ. Give it full throttle and it starts to tear into the sod, and quickly burrows down to it's depth of just over two feet deep. You'll want to pull the auger up every half foot or so to clear the spiral. It digs much faster that way and will not clog up. The auger has a release spring built into the top of the shaft. If it hits a rock or a root it won't tear up the gearbox or send you whipping around. The grip is wide, over two feet and can be held on to by anyone to keep fully stable. This also could be held by two people if you had a lot of holes to dig in one day. Each hole is 8 inches wide and clean all the way to the bottom. All waste dirt is deposited on the sides of the hole. No collapsing or half filled holes when done. This can be used for more than just setting posts as well. It works great for digging multiple holes for hollowing out a water feature, planting larger trees or softening up the ground for french drains and water catchment systems. You use this to punch numerous holes, then dig them out. It goes much faster in hard ground using a hole digger. I highly recommend this auger to anyone in the market for a new post hole digger.

This is such an easy way to dig holes for a porch, or get started on deeper holders for a fence. We are extending our welded pipe fence a few acres, and this is so much easier than getting started by hand. Although we need to go 4' deep with our holes, and this partial auger only gets us about 3'. But the 8" bit it comes with is plenty wide enough for our 3" pipe while leaving enough room for a tamping bar around the sides. This is a huge time saver in digging hundreds of holes. Like the see-through gas tank, very simple to see when you are running low. It starts within 5 pulls every time so far, so we haven't had to be frustrated trying to get it to start. A bigger guy can run this by himself, or you can put one person on each handle. If it binds up and you are a smaller person trying to handle it by yourself, it could really jerk you around so use caution. Lots of power, we had an easy time digging in our Colorado ground. Overall a great tool to have for projects around our hobby farm. Probably wouldn't invest in one if we were just building a single deck, but absolutely worth it for a whole fenceline.

Easy start when using 89 octane gas/oili mix. Runs like a champ and easy for 1 person to use. High rpm makes a quick post hole in Texas dirt/caliche. Small engine easy to lift out of hole, but the high rpm makes for a powerful 2 stroke engine! Can also be used to plant shrubs,etc. Idles perfectly even at high elevations

For the price your paying this is a great little auger ,it was easy to assemble,bit tip and them bit to the head.Even came with gas mix for your first gallon of gas.Runs well and has plenty of power for its size.Easy to control and makes short work of the holes i need to dig.

Thinking it was better built as it was rated commercial duty and light weight. I paid $30 extra. Mount under the motor was broken when I tried to start it. Seemed to be made of really thin metal. Returned it to Home Depot. Bought a different brand.

Works great ,Better than digging.

It runs and drills reasonalbly well when it decides to start, which is almost never. No kidding, it is the coldest motor ever made, it takes severe flooding to get it to start and then dies after 30 seconds. I have been around small engines for decades, and understand starting, plugs, gas, lines, filters, weather, etc. etc. This is simply junk, and now out of warranty. I should have returned it the first time it failed, but my mistake I thought it was curable. It isn't, so DO NOT BUY THIS.

My wife and I bought this machine to dig holes for the trees we planted, works very well. The ground around our home in very hard and rocky.

Replaced the big bit with a 2" tiny bit to drill 8" holes around homes. Didn't even last for 10 houses before it started jamming up. Seems like the gears inside need lubed or something but there's no place to add any lubricant nor is there anything in the instructions about lubing it. Very frustrating for $250

When the soil is not compacted and semi dry it works great but anything other than that it lacks the power/torque to work well.

This augur is to weak to dig in red dirt. The motor lose power as it dig in hard red clay dirt. It finally stop working,

Worked great. Should’ve bought one many years ago!

It's good the problem is to don't have too much power It's stopped all time

Very easy to operate With one person. Easy assembly would recommend for any small job

very disappointed, unable to dig holes would not recommend this product.

Rating provided by a verified purchaser

Great price, works great

No,it is hard to start for a new machine

Rating provided by a verified purchaser

Great auger. Good variable speed.