Dewalt DW997 cordless drill - problem if unused for years?

Hi all

I might have the opportunity to replace my annoying cordless Ryobi drills for the 18V Dewalt DW997. It is new but it was bought some time ago; possibly a few years.

Is it possible it (or the battery) may be knackered or that it may have problems?

Cheers

Max

The drill itself will be fine - the battery is likely to be goosed by now though.
John

Thanks for the reply. I have emailed Dewalt and they said:

" the easiest way to test the batterys is with a voltage meter, the battery in a discharged state should be no less that 2 volts less than the voltage of the battery, so if its an 18v battery then you should get no less than around 16v, if the battery is dead then you should get much less than this."

I've had the opportunity to test now. Unfortunately I was not able to test the batteries before charging them (for a good reason which I won't go into here). After charge they were showing just over 20V. The charge took one hour (as it should), and although I have not actually done any work with them, I have been pulling the trigger a fair bit and there's no sign of it losing power yet.

Whilst charging, the charger had a slow blinking red light. It seems that the charger would also blink if it was defective, but it is tough to tell from the diagrams how the blink would be different... Is it a standard thing for Dewalt and if so could anyone tell me what type of blinking means what?

I'm really hoping the batteries are OK, and so far things seem good. I did however also come across many a video on youtube about how to rejuvenate a dead or damaged NiCad battery. Are those vids ok or should they be treated with caution?

Many thanks

The only thing you can do Max is to give the drill a go under load, just to see how it performs.
It's likely the battery capacity is low, and if it is the charge time will be less.
As for the charging light, usually the light has one state when charging, which changed to another state when it's done.....on my Hitachi, it's lamp on continuously when charging, which changes to a flash when it's ready.
John

NiCd batteries do not, in general, give a crap about sitting around for a while. I suspect they will be perfectly fine.

The person who replied from Dewalt will have absolutely no knowledge of battery chemistry.

Monkeh said:

NiCd batteries do not, in general, give a crap about sitting around for a while. I suspect they will be perfectly fine.

The person who replied from Dewalt will have absolutely no knowledge of battery chemistry.

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I agree, sometimes you need to flash them or pulse charge them but age is not the concern...pinenot

I agree with all of the battery opinions here, but if the batteries have been left flat or only partly charged then there could be issues with their longevity......
Over to Max to report back!
John

Burnerman said:

but if the batteries have been left flat or only partly charged then there could be issues with their longevity......

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NiCd cells don't care. If the battery pack was already abused, letting it totally discharge could damage a cell, but if it was in good working order, no harm will be done by letting it sit at any charge state.