Jeff The Drunk wrote in :

On Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:35:23 -0700 (PDT), novel8
wrote:

Bought the Hitachi 18v cordless drill 3 months ago. I used it back
then and all went well. Yesterday i had to just screw a 1 1/2 screw
into my laundry wooden dryier holder...for one of the legs got loose.
i got as far into with the drill till about a 3/8 of an inch of the
screw. I sort of pushed the drill to complete it, but it could not do
so, so i had to finish it with a screwdriver. I then tried to run the
drill and it would not start...The battery was pratically full when I
stopped using it 3 months ago. The manual says to recharge it again.
No timetable for how long. Anyhow I did, the red light came on and
waited about an hour or so when the red light started to flicker on
and off...so i presumed that the charge was complete, of course the
manual doesn't tell you time, color or whatever. OK, its working
again...is this typical of these batteries? Are they that sensitive
just to try and screw in one screw? I called Hitatchi support and said
it was normal.

I bought a 14.4v Hit last year. comes with a spare battery. 3 months
is a lot of time but I would expect a LiOn battery to lose some of its
charge but not to the extent what you describe. A well charged battery
should keep enough of a charge to do more than your description.
You may be incorrect on the status of the battery when you last used
it.


For my cell phone Li-ion battery,the manual says that the battery must be
charged/discharged(cycled) several times before it delivers "full
capacity".

One thing for all rechargable packs;store them with a FULL charge.

Li-ion cells are supposed to have a lower self-discharge rate than NiCd or
NiMH cells.
some are advertised as "holding 80% of charge for up to 6 months".

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com