gogittum
Well-known member
I saw that some guy is selling a refurbished AAA battery for $1,000. Free shipping. :LOL2:
[/quote]
I said AA, and that's fun, but I should really have said NiCads for power tools. It's been several years now, but I needed new batteries for my Porter-Cable and DeWalt cordless drills. Read somewhere about buying 1.5 volt individual battery cells and rebuilding the battery packs myself.
Buying good, high capacity battery packs for cordless tools is expensive and experience has taught me to bite the bullet and buy the bigger capacity because of the increased work time. The idea of spending ~$25 for a pack was "very" appealing, so I looked into it.
I nearly went nuts. An 18 volt power pack needs 13 cells = 18.5 volts. You can buy them in various mah capacities so focus on the ones that will fit in your housing. HoooBoy - some sell individual cells for $X, another for $Y.
Then Mr. Wong comes along and will sell 10 packs for $Z or 15 packs for $A. Then watch the shipping, cause it's all over the place. In the end, I did buy enuf for 2 packs.....and they turned out to be junk. They died within months.
(I won't go into the tangle of actually replacing those cells and soldering them up in the right sequence, then fitting them into the housing. I did it, but what a f--king nightmare - and I'm very handy, very experienced and had a very good shop to work in. Do yourself a favor, pay the price and buy them ready to go)
Then comes the endless debate over Chinese quality and true capacity of what's being sold.....whole 'nuther can of worms. I used batteries as an example, but many products suffer.....try buying fishing tackle online. (don't)
[/quote]
I said AA, and that's fun, but I should really have said NiCads for power tools. It's been several years now, but I needed new batteries for my Porter-Cable and DeWalt cordless drills. Read somewhere about buying 1.5 volt individual battery cells and rebuilding the battery packs myself.
Buying good, high capacity battery packs for cordless tools is expensive and experience has taught me to bite the bullet and buy the bigger capacity because of the increased work time. The idea of spending ~$25 for a pack was "very" appealing, so I looked into it.
I nearly went nuts. An 18 volt power pack needs 13 cells = 18.5 volts. You can buy them in various mah capacities so focus on the ones that will fit in your housing. HoooBoy - some sell individual cells for $X, another for $Y.
Then Mr. Wong comes along and will sell 10 packs for $Z or 15 packs for $A. Then watch the shipping, cause it's all over the place. In the end, I did buy enuf for 2 packs.....and they turned out to be junk. They died within months.
(I won't go into the tangle of actually replacing those cells and soldering them up in the right sequence, then fitting them into the housing. I did it, but what a f--king nightmare - and I'm very handy, very experienced and had a very good shop to work in. Do yourself a favor, pay the price and buy them ready to go)
Then comes the endless debate over Chinese quality and true capacity of what's being sold.....whole 'nuther can of worms. I used batteries as an example, but many products suffer.....try buying fishing tackle online. (don't)
