12 V Drill battery pack alternative

This one from my son, who found the idea on another board

When the 12 V battery pack dies and will not hold a charge for your 12 V cordless tools try this:

(AND Yes, I did a search on here, but did not find anything like this)

Take the dead battery pack apart and toss the cells.

Take an extension cord and remove BOTH ends (male & female) from the cord

Solder the extension cord wires to the contacts INSIDE the battery pack.

Drill a hole in the base of the pack and run the extension cord through the hole.

Get a pair of battery-charger alligator clamps and attach them to the other end of the cord.

IMPORTANT: Be sure you put the red clip on the wire that is connected to the + terminal inside the old battery pack and the black clip on the (-) terminal wire.

Now, whenever you are working on your car, your 12V drill/sander etc, etc has a power supply, by simply attaching the clips to your car battery. Especially good for "on the road" repairs, etc,

You don't have to worry about the battery pack going dead, or the lack of a 120V outlet on the road

Yes, you lose the "cordless" feature, but you gain a reliable tool to take along on a trip!

(and you can still use the drill as a cordless by putting your other 12 V (working) battery pack in it for "around the house" work)


Register now (free) or login to remove ads

That's a great idea, especially considering the price of a replacement battery pack for these devices.

Who has 12v cordless anymore? Everything I've seen is 17v or higher. Good way to revitalize an old drill though. I have an 18v skill with a dead battery and found Lowes sells them and the batteries cost 49 bucks! That's crazy man!

Why not just rebuild the battery pack? All it takes for most is a handful of sub-C cells, a soldering iron and a half hour (after the first one - to figure out how they are 'wired'). And yes, several of the guys here "taught" me how and it works great - unfortunately, the Porter Cable drill I did it for blew the clutch, so now I have a new Bosch drill - which isn't quite as good.

Dave W

Much easier to rebuild the pack and regain the portability of the tool.

Vince

Pretty dangerous as well. Now you have 100's of potential amps running through a small cord. Unless it is fused right near the battery this has the potential to casue major problems.

__________________
Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity



Chet

It would cost less than 2 dollars and be almost zero trouble to just add an in-line fuse at the red 'gator clip, either blade or glass type would work just fine.


That is a good point however and nothing should ever be attached to the battery without a fuse located very close to the connection.

And to rebuild a battery pack, you don't even need (or want, for that matter) the high-dollar fast dump high performance RC batteries, the plain vanilla's work fine.

Putting a fuse in line would be a GREAT idea! I just never thot of it!