makita charger question

PETER R · Post by **PETER R** » Fri Jan 10, 2020 11:45 pm

bought an oldish 18v drill which hadn't been used so as new ,two batterys both good the red bottom ones ,anyway all ok did a full decking in the summer no probs,then goes to charge up the batterys few days ago charger dead no light on nothing ,so managed to buy another , the both batterys are flat , but when I put them in the other charger the light went from red to green in two minutes ,green saying 100% surely a flat battery would take a while to charge up ,swapped in the other one and it did the same red to green in a couple of mins

big-all · Post by **big-all** » Sat Jan 11, 2020 12:21 am

and oldish nicad or nmh battery will loose perhaps 15% capacity per year so after about 5 years can be fairly useless
what make and capacity [amp hours]are you batteries ??

Dave54 · Post by **Dave54** » Sat Jan 11, 2020 9:46 am

Difficult to know what's wrong without having a known good battery to test the charger.
Is the charger new or second hand? Is it exactly the same type as the old one?
It's all going to depend on how the charger works as well. It could be "seeing" a battery that will take no further charge current as being fully charged.

PETER R · Post by **PETER R** » Sat Jan 11, 2020 10:07 am

thanks for the replies , ill have a look

Argyll · Post by **Argyll** » Mon Jan 13, 2020 1:31 pm

You can buy a converter that allows your drill to run on the new lion batteries. I bought one for my old DeWalt and works great.

PETER R · Post by **PETER R** » Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:10 pm

ok thanks ,the batterys are ok just thought it odd they charged up so fast my 14.4 dewalt when flat takes a good half hour maybe longer ,ive checked the charger and its exactly the same

fin · Post by **fin** » Mon Jan 13, 2020 7:24 pm

usually when the batteries are past their best they take less time to charge up. a new battery normally takes about a hour in my experience. i had a drill a while back that the batteries started to charge up fully in 2 minutes or so..... then they would be flat after a screw or 2....

currently i have dewalt xr tools and about 12 or so batteries. the original 2 charge up in about 5 minutes and are next to useless so they are on a shelf in my garage.... need to drop em off somewhere to get propperly recycled rather than jus hoy em in a skip. the other older batteries are now noticeably dropping off so i think soon ill have to either buy a new tool with batteries or a few batteries from the dewalt shop down at spennymoor

PETER R · Post by **PETER R** » Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:13 pm

yes fin your right although they felt strong after literally I min of charging just done a bit of drilling and it died quite quickly , so what ill do now is try it for say half an hour and see what they are like then , as I said in my first post the kit is old but had never been used ,and they worked fine on the decking job in the summer then the charger died ,but got another now so fingers crossed it puts in a decent charge

Argyll · Post by **Argyll** » Tue Jan 14, 2020 8:39 pm

fin wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2020 7:24 pm usually when the batteries are past their best they take less time to charge up. a new battery normally takes about a hour in my experience. i had a drill a while back that the batteries started to charge up fully in 2 minutes or so..... then they would be flat after a screw or 2....

currently i have dewalt xr tools and about 12 or so batteries. the original 2 charge up in about 5 minutes and are next to useless so they are on a shelf in my garage.... need to drop em off somewhere to get propperly recycled rather than jus hoy em in a skip. the other older batteries are now noticeably dropping off so i think soon ill have to either buy a new tool with batteries or a few batteries from the dewalt shop down at spennymoor

Fin do you get good deals down in Spenny?

big-all · Post by **big-all** » Tue Jan 14, 2020 10:51 pm

little used can cause failure quicker than in use daily as crystals form in the batteries causing greater self discharge
fortunately lion batteries do not suffer from long periods off non use

fin · Post by **fin** » Fri Jan 17, 2020 4:53 pm

ermmm it depends at spennymoor. its not massively cheaper than if ya shop about online. maybe £10 or £20 cheaper. theres loads of package deals but again it depends whats there. sometimes ya can pick up decent second hand batteries for say £20 each which are obviously from tools returned under warranty that are fecked. take the batteries out to sell on as seen and bin the rest. or like i once got a couple of new ones for maybe £30 a piece. but theres all sorts there ya jus gotta ask. one of my mates went and spent like £3 or £4k and they gave him shed loads of stuff he just asked. he got like free tool boxes and levels and saw blades and all kinds of other stuff.

pretty sure i got my table saw for about £40 or £50 cheaper than i could find it anywhere. and same for my mate with his thicknesser. all of the stuff has factory rework stamped into it. though wether that means that they were broken or if they are maybe seconds or whatever i dunno. theyve not caused me any problems though