Thread: cooked cordless drill batteries

get new batteries or get your old ones repacked.

If you can use a soldering iron, but some sub c solderable terminal batteries - there are good and bad ones though. The cheap rubbish on flea bay is just that. Pay a few extra dollars and buy some decent ones. It will be half the price of buying a new battery for the drill. You are after 15 x 1.2 volt versions for that pack. Check what type they are - NiCad or Lion, then replace with the same type.

or they could be NiMH.

Nickel-based Batteries Information

they were the next big thing after NiCd. But they didn't like being worked in our summers. My old Bosch kit was all NiMH and to be honest the batteries didn't live up to the hype over the NiCd.

Oh, yeah, forgot them...

Thanks.

IMHO It is worth paying the money for Lithium if you can get the batteries in the later format.
I have had the 18V Ryobi 1+ stuff for over 8 years and when the orignal batteries died I bought new Lithium ones .
What a difference! Where 2 batteries were needed and juuuust managed to blow the whole yard it now only takes one to do the whole job.
Regards Philip A

G'day P,
This mob will repack them for you. I've had very good results in the past with this service.

Akkupak | Battery Repacking

Don.

You probably don't have Ryobi1+ but a little googling shows Akkupak to be VERY expensive for Ryobi anyway.
2x 4AH Ryobi Lion batteries are $179 at Bunnings.
While 1x 2AH NIMH battery at Akkupak is $105!!!!.

This is ridiculously expensive and could only be justified if the batteries you want are no longer available.
You may be better to buy a new tool with readily available batteries.
Regards Philip A

Thanks for the replies, I've always understood replacement batteries and repacking to not be economical compared to the cost of a whole new tool, hence my wondering if there's some way to redeem the batteries that seem to have been overheated. I'll look into the costs. I repacked a laptop battery a few years ago with ebay cells and it was a complete waste of time, won't be doing that again.
Makes me wonder how tradies get on in hot climates, I wouldn't have thought that a few days of 45-plus temps was that much of a rarity, surely a metal toolbox on a ute in the sun would regularly get to those temps.