On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:12:21 GMT, Brian Henderson
wrote:

On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 15:20:49 -0600, "Swingman" wrote:

"Brian Henderson" wrote in message

It's usually not worth the time or trouble to rebuild unless you're
using bottom-of-the-barrel replacement parts, and then why bother
doing it at all? Most batteries aren't that expensive and they last
quite a while, just dispose of the old ones and get new.

That depends. A new DeWalt 18v XRP is in the range of $75 - $85 ... for $48
you can rebuild/upgrade and increase the capacity considerably, and for $72
you can further upgrade the cells for twice the runtime, either option
giving you a stronger, longer lasting battery than any new one you can buy.

But you're not figuring in the cost of your time to do it. I don't
know about you, but my time is worth at least as much as the raw
materials.

Besides, how much do you have to use a battery before it completely
fails, especially on a new tool? Most of the time, by the time the
batteries are failing, the tool is out of date and you'd probably do
better to just buy a new tool.

The batteries on my barely 2 year-old Milwaukee drill are already
failing. The drill is in barely broken-in condition so the idea of
replacing it just because the batteries are failing is quite repugnant.
OTOH, the idea of having to replace barely 2 year old batteries is equally
frustrating. At least my PC drill went for about 4 years before the
batteries died. On that one, replacing the drill made sense because I had
shaken plastic pieces out of the drill (it had never been dropped or
mistreated) at about 2 years old, so I didn't know how long the drill would
last if I replaced the batteries.



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If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

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