Dewalt Cordless Drill 18 Volt Battery Cheat

I thought about that but was afraid the extra voltage might fry the cordless tools. I could very easily tie into the NATO plug on either of my military trucks to get the 24 volts; I even have and accessory female end to fit into the NATO outlets. I am so disgusted with the inferior quality of Dewalt rechargeable batteries that I am working on a "cheater" to use Ryobi 18 volt batteries which cost about half of the Dewalt units. Remember this, "A product is only as good as its cheapest part!"

You could use the 24 volts on that 18 volt drill also. Just clamp the neg to the first battery in series and the postive the the last battery in series.

I have both 12 volt Dewalt drill and 18 volt drill. I noticed you hooked up an 18 volt drill to the 12 volt car battery. Would that be any better or more powerful than making a hookup for a 12 volt drill to run off the car battery?

I know my Dewalt 12V battery is compatible with Black and Decker and B&D Firestorm batteries. They cost less but have less ampere-hours. Maybe its the same for 18V battery. You get what you pay for.

Make your batteries live longer by never storing them empty for many days or longer, not leaving them on a dumb charger for too long (overnight on a smart charger should be fine), don't charge or operate them at extreme temperatures, and fire them up periodically to keep dentrites from forming.

Thank you for the research on the subject of replacement cells for the battery pack. I am convinced that the battery packs can be rebuilt but would have concerns about placing the pack onto the charger for the first time. I thought about leaving the cells in the battery pack but they would be "in the way" of the connectors that I used for wiring. I thought about using lead in place of the cells to achieve weight balance and still might do that. Thanks again for the tip on replacement cells!

Do you think its good to leave the dead cells in for weight balance?

About these batteries, if you can take apart the dead pack and salvage the connectors (some of the welds can be stubborn), buy 1.2V sub c cells with solder tabs (don't solder directly to the cell). You can get NiMH cells which hold more mAH and don't have the NiCad dentrite short issue. Don't leave these on a NiCad charger for too long. They will get hot and dry out the cells. NiMH $60 or NiCad $37. eBay search: sub c tab

Great idea, that way you would not have to use a 100 foot extension cord to work inside of a house and your power source would be portable. I really wish Dewalt would reduce the price of their 18 volt batteries to from $89 to around $40.00 and people like us would not have to go to these extremes. I'll make up a special cord today with the cigarette lighter plug on one end and the female portion of an extension cord at the other with about ten feet of cord to work with and post it to YouTube.

I've thought about doing this to one of my dead batteries. I was thinking though to put a cigarette lighter plug on it so I can plug that into my portable jumpstarter.

NO NO NO!!!!! You are using the car battery to POWER the drill (or any other dewalt cordless power tool). In order to charge an 18 volt battery you would need a power source greater than 18 volts to do so. You can fabricate any of the cordless batteries this way to run your cordless tools in an emergency situation or whe your battery runs down to zero. This is for people who work on jobsites where there is no electrical power to run 110 volt tools or chargers.

So you're saying you can use the car's batterie to charge the drill? Does it only work on dewalt 18 volts?

The truck is a 1986 M1008A1 CUCV which was the "radio truck" during its active duty life. GM produced these for the military for a few years then the H-1 Hummers replaced them. I bought mine from a guy in Carmel New York and it hs been my daily driver ever since.

It's an M1008A1 CUCV, 1986. You can see it in action in one or more of my videos by clicking on aboonski or "more from aboonski".

Is that an M880? the truck I mean. Can only see the grille gaurd.