On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 10:19:44 -0800, "patrick mitchel"
wrote:

Or he could go to Harbor Freight and get a new drill (with
battery pack) for $14.
I hope he has better luck with the "drillmaster" drill- the harbor freight
bottom end drill- than i did. while the drill itself is ok (i bought the 12v
and discovered that the thing had space in the pack for 2 more cells), the
batteries themselves self-discharge at a surprising rate-2 days from a full
charge to nothing.I bought a bunch of the packs on sale and was going to use
the cells to rebuild other packs. It didn't work that way- first the cells
were 1300mah cells- pretty feeble in comparo to the 1800-2200 mah that the
typical sub c cell, second, they didn't take kindly to the 9.6 makita
fastcharge(the drill I bought the additional packs for). After a couple of
cycles, they were dead to the worldI ended up buying surplus cells from an
electronics surplus place that were out of date but still held a decent
charge. If I'd bought the cells from "batteryspace.com , I woulda paid
pehaps twice the price than the surplus cells. which were double the cheapie
drillmaster cells- but they would have been matched and 1800 mah. There's a
big variety of cells that are useful- some are meant for fast charge, some
aren't, some also have a higher self discharge rate than others- then
there's nimh cells that are better than nicads when it comes to power- up to
3000mah) for the same size cells but may not take the same # of cycles
before they're ready to be "recycled".I read of one estimate that nicads
will go 1000-1500 cycles before they're "dead" nimh are 500-1000 cycles and
the latest lithium ion cells possibly less than 200 cycles before dead. What
bugs me is the trend to ****can the drill when the packs call it quits
because the tech has improved in the new drill (more features, less weight,
more power). We're tossing a lot of material ...because of the "cheapness"
of a new one. Pat

I've got two Black and Decker drills in my junk box- battery pack
costs more than a new drill.