Black and Decker Battery

It depends, the biggest problem is getting the battery box apart. On some drills this is fixed together with screws so it's easy. On others the box is glued, sometimes the joints can be prised apart without too much damage to the plastic, and sometimes they have been glued too well and getting them apart is difficult. I have found that many drills used Sub-C cells in series, and these are available with solder tags. This is usefull if you don't have a spot welder for batteries. Although many packs are made with NiCad cells I have successfully replaced these with NiMh cells, although I believe that this is frowned upon by "those who know". A source of Sub-C cells with tags is VAPEXTECH, on ebay or on his website. (I have no connection with this company other than getting very good service) My guess is that for 9.6V you will need 8 cells at about £2 each, so it will cost you about £16 to build a new battery pack. You will have to check the exact price. Good luck! Ian. >

Often the best bet is to look for a tool which uses the same batteries, and buy one that comes with 3 of them. You then have 2 tools and 3 batteries - you can either keep them, or ebay the spare tool with one battery, leaving you with a functional drill at usually fairly low cost.

Yup, when I rebuilt a B&D proline 9.6V pack it required clamping in a vice and walloping with a lump hammer!

I will second that. Bought a bunch of AAs from them and they have performed very well.

I think I'll try that. Although this is a nice tool, well balanced etc, I don't recall paying all that much more than 20 or 30 Pounds for it new, and that was 10 years ago. This sort of thing has come down in price since then.

Curiously enough, this is screwed, and easy to get apart.

Nope, don't have a spot welder, or any kind of welder! I'll have a look at Vapextech. I'll also see if I can find another drill that takes the same batteries, as it may be cheaper to buy that than a new set of batteries. Crazy world we live in.

You'd get the battery cells at the same price as the factory if you bought them 100,000 at a time. ;-)

True, but I seem to be able to get them cheaper if I just buy one drill, without having to buy 100,000 drills.

You won't find a battery on sale for a tool that old. They change the fittings to them every year or less as an obsolescence design thing.

Anyone know how much Lithium-ion batteries would cost made up to fit one's oldish drill? I wouldn't mind finding a local electickerer to do a job like that on my MacAllisters.

You would need to budget for a new charger as well - the charging technology is different.

You need buy a cheap B&D, they still use the same fittings on my 5 yo one as the new ones.

Not quite that easy.. you need a charge controller too.

Thanks to both my repliers. So the best bet in buying a new drill is to get one that is repairable to that standard as standard.

And how much are they anyone?