So, I’m going to leave my house for the day. I go back in to get something I forgot – smell a funny smell. Go to the basement – My 14.4 DeWalt Battery is smoking and melting into the charger, both parts are fused together and very hot, and a plasticky burning smell fills the air. Lucky lucky lucky that I forgot something and went back into the house – maybe the thing would have melted enough to short-circuit the thing and trip the breaker, maybe not. Now I’m out one battery (getting old anyway) and I have to decide if it’s worth it buying a charger at $59.
Questions –
Anybody have something like this happen before with chargers?
I’m looking into the old DeWalt charger recall, but I believe I checked that before and I wasn’t eligible.
Should I buy, say, a DeWalt impact driver and use that charger and batteries for my drill? The drill’s in reasonable shape. Anyone know if the newer batteries will fit in an older drill? I miss woodworker’s warehouse – home cheapo has all the batteries banded to the tools so I couldn’t try them out.
I’m tempted to just get a 12v Makita kit with an impact driver and forget the whole thing
Ben
Replies
As far as I know the only change was the old stick type 12v. Anything other than that in the same voltage should be ok. My newer 14.4's work fine with my older (5 yr) drill and saw.
These should interest you.
http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime/messages?msg=10915.4
http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime/messages?msg=60096.4
http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime/messages?msg=37022.1
I would say Dewalt OWES you a new battery and charger. Better for them to give you the new stuff than to have bad PR from it. Besides a good company will stand behind their product.
BTW let's see some pics.
Edited 7/23/2005 9:49 pm ET by reinvent
I've got 2 Dewalt drills (12v and 18V) and I've never had a problem with either one of them. In fact I'm on my second set of batteries for the 12v, first set was about 7 yrs old before they died. Love my Dewalt products!
Trev