I have a Dewalt cordless drill with two battery packs, neither of them will take a charge, Is there anyway to restore them without replacing the battery packs?
as much as I love Dewalt i must say if it wont charge you can't charge, throw it away and spend another $80; time is wasting and money is getting lost.
first, see if the problem is the battery or the charger, chargers can be plugged in and on but not charging the battery, then which every on it is, unplug it, wrap the cord around it, hold it as high as you can above your head and then slam it on the ground. I thought my batteries went out on my Hitachi drill but it was the charger, fairly inexpensive to replace
take a tester and figure our which is your positive and negative terminals then take a pair of jumper cables and momentarily hook the connections to the battery. it will break up the corrosion inside the batteries to be able to take a charge. it will also help correct a memory problem with them. its not s sure fix if its got a bad cell it wont help but most of the time it will work good luck
The Zap method only works on NiCads, and then only for a short time. NiCads grow whiskers that puncture the membranes and short the cells if they are left discharged. Zapping them blasts away the whiskers that shorted the cells but the membranes are still punctured. DeWalt batteries don't use NiCads - when they go they are gone. Just be sure the charger is okay.
You can try zapping the battery packs with a welder per the referenced URL. I've never done that personally but I've had quite good success zapping individual Ni-Cd batteries with an auto battery charger and it's worth a try. You definitely need a higher current and/or voltage source to successfully zap a battery pack with its array of series and parallel connected cells. If that doesn't work, if you're handy you can try rebuilding the battery pack by disassembling it and testing/replacing the bad individual Ni-Cd sub-C cells. There are several good sources online for detailed info on how to do that. I also happen to own a DeWalt cordless drill with 2 battery packs that are slowly going bad and that's what I plan to do when they finally fail. Replacement battery packs are ridiculously overpriced and are only a last resort. Good luck!
