Thread: Modified 12v drill to wind legs on van

Gday all, a work mate and i did some head bashing the other day and worked out a great way to have a 12v drill allways powered to do the legs on the van.
Needed:
a length of dual core wire (i used 9mt's of 6mm)
1 Anderson plug
2 female spade wire connectors
1 12 volt drill (the one i used battery was no good anymore)

I took the battery out of the drill then opened the cassing and removed the batteries, i then cut the top of the plastic case off where the POS & NEG terminals connected, up inside the neck are the POS & NEG terminals for the battery to power the drill, i straightened these with long nose pliers and found that female spade wire connectors fit very nice. I drilled a hole big enough to feed the wires through in the bottom of the battery case and fed the wires through, fitted the spade connectors then connected them to the POS & NEG terminals. I wired up the Anderson to the other end of the wire lead to the corrisponding POS & NEG.
I took it out plugged it into the Anderson on the van went to the back of the van and wound the legs down and up, no more having to recharge the drill now and allways ready to go and it can also be used from the car at any time for drilling screwing or what ever is needed.
I hope this is of use to some others

I have a 12V GMC drill set up exactly like that to wind the legs up and down to remove and replace the camper on the back of the Defender.

However because the drill doesn't have enough grunt to lift the camper, I attach the head off an angle grinder for a 3:1 reduction when winding the camper up.

It's a great system. I have been using it for two years with no problems. It plugs into the same socket that the camper normally plugs into. I even carry a spare drill. If the original drill packs it in all I have to do is swap the empty battery pack onto the spare drill.