Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire cordless drills

I have a horrible time with battery life. Charge them up, they run down within a few minutes of light work. If I charge and let them sit a few days, you can hardly run a 1" screw in.

Had Ryobi, Dewalt etc. Any secrets I'm missing?

Li-Ion are you friends. I charge mine up and they can sit for weeks and are ready to go. I got so fed up with Nicad tools that I went out and bought a new Porter Cable 20v Li-Ion set....problem solved. They will die suddenly without much warning but my drill has a battery life indicator.

Li-ion is the answer.
I have had excellent results from both Rigid and DeWalt.

I went with the RIDGED brand from Home Depot. They have a life time warranty on their batteries right along with the equipment. Just remember to register it on line when you get it. Li-Ion are the way to go right now.

Yeah, probably how to take care of your batteries. Don't charge 'em hot, don't charge 'em cold. Don't run them down in a light or something similar that will absolutely drain them down. Nicads lose about one-percent/day so if you let it sit 2mo, guess what. It is what it is.

I finally developed a system to keep my batteries stored and rotated through a charger so they never sat and ran down on their own.

Check what you have with a voltmeter off the charger. A new 18V Dewalt nicad will read 21V+ off the charger and will read about 20.5 a few hours later. Run a battery hard in something like a circular saw until the motor starts to bog, then check the voltage. That will give you an idea of what a functional voltage is. I'll bet your batteries that are dying quick will only charge to about 16-17V or so.

Youtube have videos of guys who've "zapped" bad nicads with a wire welder, YMMV. In theory this will boil the sulfate off the cells.

I just order new innards from Gulf Coast Battery on ebay. $88 for two 18V delivered.

They are spendy, and won't live as long as a cared for nicad.

Milwaukee M18 Fuel 1/2" drill. Lithium Ion battery. By far the best cordless tools I have bought.

And?

Ni cad is yesterday's news. Get with the program.

Li-ion. Look for the newer 4AH batteries.

I like the Bosch tools I have. The biggest thing to compare isn't the drill itself, but the batteries.

+1. Milwaukee

The brushless Milwaukee fuel 18v is the best thing going right now.

The web sight garagejournal.com ( like 24fire, but for tool nuts) will give you all the info you need.

+2

Interesting. I just switched over to LI this week. At the advice of several of my home builder buddies I went from Dewalt to Makita. Amazon beat Home Depots price by 50% for the same deal and also upgraded my batteries to the higher capacity models. Win win for me.

I finally wised up and bought Milwaukee M18 tools and they are the bomb!! Their fuel line of tools are awesome!!

Yeah-I have an older Craftsman NiCad that won't hold a charge more than a couple weeks. The Dewalt Li-ion tool keeps a charge so long I have to wonder what the time frame actually might be..

I bought a 1/2" Bosch DDS181 with lithium-ion when both ni-cad batteries died in my 1/2" Makita. it was on sale at Lowes withcame with an exrtra battery. It cost $30 less for the drill with 3 batteries than 2 replacement batteries for the Makita. The lithium-ion batteries run longer, don't discharge when idle and recharge much quicker than the ni-cad batteries.

My sister is a tool dealer. When I asked her best salesman, a couple of months ago, which was best - red or yellow - he brought me out a Milwaukee Fuel. STOUT drill!

I wasn't aware Rigid had a lifetime warranty

I bought the M18 Hammer Drill and Impact Lithium-ion combo kit and they are the best cordless tools I have bought as well. The batteries last a long long time between charges. They also charge very quickly. The kit came with a battery for each tool and an extra battery. I picked up the jobsite radio later and that too has been really nice.

Don't use a cordless drill where a corded one will do.