Influence of battery replacement on driver purchase

[jon_ramp]

I'm in the market for an impact driver. Seems like the Ridgid Lifetime Service Agreement which includes battery replacement is my best choice. I've had a Porter Cable 14.4v drill for more than 5 years that came with 2 batteries that no longer hold a charge for very long. The PC is the only drill/driver I've ever had and short of the battery problem still works great. A friend has a Milwaukee drill, same battery problem, and I thought the PC replacement batteries were expensive until I talked to him. I'm not a pro so my drill/driver won't get every day or even every week use. Any thoughts? Am I giving battery replacement too much weight in the purchasing decision?

[dkerfoot]

Batteries do wear out. Exposing them to heat and cold wears them out faster (actually heat reduces the total lifetime of the battery, cold just shortens the time of discharge). Lithium batteries will last much longer between charges, but start to deteriorate after about three years, regardless of use.

I've got several Craftsman 19.2V tools. I recently added a Lithium battery (last Father's day) and love it. My other two non-lithiums are now used merely to cover for when the Lithium is charging.

For me, paying for a replacement battery is less painful if you use it with several tools, instead of just one. The actual cost is the same, but it seems easier to justify.

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[LCHIEN]

a couple of angles. Batteries seem to have a lifespan much less than the tool itself, thereby becoming the limiting item.

So if the battery is too expensive (e.g. half the cost of a new tool with battery) then the tool has to be bought with a thought that it will only last 3 years or so and have to be replaced.

Buying a set of tools with common batteries and charger helps initially by splitting the cost of the batteries and chargers among the tools (assuming you don't use them so heavily they all need fully charged batteries at the same time.). However, when the battery fails, the cost of not replacing that battery goes up... not buying a $60 battery will cost $200-300 worth of tools to be tossed. Worse, if you have multiple batteries, you may be faced with the decision more often as each battery fails on its own schedule, or you my put off buying replacement batteries until you have a whole raft of tools relying on one battery pack.

The dilemmas are endless.

[Jim Frye]

Battery Costs...

I'm in the market for an impact driver. Seems like the Ridgid Lifetime Service Agreement which includes battery replacement is my best choice. I've had a Porter Cable 14.4v drill for more than 5 years that came with 2 batteries that no longer hold a charge for very long. The PC is the only drill/driver I've ever had and short of the battery problem still works great. A friend has a Milwaukee drill, same battery problem, and I thought the PC replacement batteries were expensive until I talked to him. I'm not a pro so my drill/driver won't get every day or even every week use. Any thoughts? Am I giving battery replacement too much weight in the purchasing decision?

I have several drill/drivers (a Hilti 9.6v, a Makita 12v, three Ryobi 18v) and have had to replace batteries for all of them. The Makita 12v stick packs are hard to find and cost over $50 each. I have four packs and just have them rebuilt for $32 each. The Hilti packs are really hard to find and I have them rebuilt for $26 each. The Ryobi One+ packs are easy to find and used to cost $20 each new, which was cheaper than having them rebuilt. They are now $30 each new, which is less than the $37 rebuild charge still. Ryobi's LiOn packs are $90 each, but none of mine are old enough to be out of warranty. One did fail and Ryobi replaced it. I have had packs last from 2 years to nearly 10 years (an original Ryobi red tab pack). All of my drills continue to work perfectly, so I am hesitant to replace them.

If you like the drill you own and it is working fine, I'd consider having the packs rebuilt. I have mine done at a local battery shop (Battery Wholesale) and they warrant their rebuilds for a year. I got on the rebuild track with my first drill (the Makita) when I discovered that Makita was going to change their pack design. I bought two extra packs and now can live with one at the rebuild shop (takes them about a week) while I keep the drill in use. I have a total of eleven 18v One+ packs (five of them are LiOn), because I have so many One+ tools.

[HarmsWay]

As everyone else has said, the batteries will almost certainly die before the tool. My first cordless drill was an expensive Milwaukee. I got better than expected battery life out of it, but it was still painful to retire it rather than buy very expensive Milwaukee batteries for it to keep it running. Because of that I decided it didn't make sense to buy expensive cordless tools. Or the cheapest either! I replaced it with a mid-range Dewalt that worked fine but I got less battery life out of it and again was faced with replacing a drill because it wasn't cost effective to buy Dewalt batteries. I also looked into rebuilding them myself but even that wasn't cost effective. Then at a local woodworking show one of the battery replacement companies (can't remember the name) had a booth and sold me a couple of batteries for my Dewalt and one for the Milwaukee. I'd say they perform at about 90% of the level of the factory batteries in terms of work between charges, but I got all three for the cost of a single Milwaukee battery so I'm happy.

The current cost of the Lithium Ion batteries cordless tools will probably keep me from buying one. Hopefully the cost will come down by the time I run out of sources for cheap batteries for my NiCad drills. If the Ridgid agreement will get you replacement batteries then that's definitely worth something because they WILL fail. Has anyone here successfully been able to do that with an older Ridgid cordless?