In message , ijon tichy
writes
Tim,

I would either buy a replacement pack with similar contacts/geometry
and modify it slightly, or rebuild the pack using new cells.
mixing old and new cells is a bad idea.

Yes. Price is a major issue though! The 24V Direct Power battery pack
does not match any commercially available replacement (AFAICT)

as people noted, the charger makes the difference. simple timer-based
chargers are not the best. proper chargers monitor the change of
current flowing through the cell to detect the point of optimum and
usually have two modes for charging, fast and slow. for NiCd and NiMH
the slow mode saves the battery life a little bit. I used MAX charge
controllers before and they are relatively easy to plug into an
existing charger.

This is a *smart* charger but I don't think it would do anything other
than Ni-cd.

depending on what type of charger you got, you can replace the cells
with any cells of the same geometry. if the charger is smart and
IC-based and the IC can charge NiMH, you can even change from NiCd to
NiMH. again, in this case you can put a higher capacity cells there.
if the charger is dumb, however and simply works on a timeout, you
either have to adjust the RC circuit to increase the time, or stick
with the same capacity.

hope this helps.

The basic message seems to be that re-celling can be done but at a cost
more than a complete discounted drill kit. Oh well! Back to global
warming:-)

regards

--
Tim Lamb