I have been working on outfitting trailers for a solar charging station trailer project that has the trailers scattered apart by at least a few hundred feet. It is far easier to carry around a 12 pound line cord than it is to try and run a few hundred feet of extension cord or move a ton and a half trailer to were the power is.
This model Dewalt cordless drill comes with NiCad batteries that are somewhere around 2000 to 2200 mAs and 12 volts.
We purchased a NiMh aftermarket replacement that comes in at 3000 mAs. It's a pain running back and forth to a charger with now only two battery packs. It's true that three packs that are now retired were not new, hard use didn't do them any good.
Anyway we grabbed some fairly flexable well insulated round wire and tied the hot, neutral and ground together and used one each to the posative and negative of a ~ 5,000 to 8,000 mA (realistic output under drill load pulled down to 12.1 volts (approx 50%)) lead acid battery, using the carcus of one of the dead packs to get power to the drill. FYI, this Harbor Freight jump start pack has the battery marked at 17aH, but with a 330 mA load, it nets out at only 12,000 mAs (12aH).
Bottom line is it works a treat! Thus far a full day of use has not run battery down.
To tweak performance just a little, thicker wire could be used.
Yellow pack to the left of drill is NiCad pack.
Black pack below the NiCad pack is aftermarket NiMh pack.
Ron Parigoris
Y11-03-06
