I hate throwing things away when they can be fixed. I also love tools. So when a well used rechargeable drill started to give less and less useful work for a charge it caused great frustration. The drill was replaced, but the old stager never made it to the bin – like all proper bodgers I kept it in the back of the garage “just in case it comes in handy for something”.
Well it has. At the Larger Scale Model Railway exhibition I found myself in front of the Multicell International stand. They had a pack for rejuvenating old rechargeable devices called “Build-a-pack”. It contains some cells, tags, heat shrink tubing etc. – for a fiver. The guys claimed I could use this to fix my drill.
First job is to extract the batteries which was easy and I pulled out the pack you see on the left of the photo. All I had to do was warm up a soldering iron and replicate this with the new batteries. Soldering the tags to join the cells together was a bit fiddly as the solder didn’t take too well to them. A bit of patience and flux cured this. I started by taping the cells together in the same shape as the old pack. Then I joined them electrically.
The instructions give vague guidance – all they can do as the parts can fix a number of different items. Lots of insulation material is provided so I used some to match the old pack.
Once the job was done I carefully checked the polarity was right before reassembling the battery cover and putting it on charge. Half an hour later the drill was better than normal. Well worth a fiver of anyone’s money.
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