Bodgeneering an 18V drill & battery

[cheb]

The drill. A Hitachi/Hikoki found in a skip. I want to use it with my Makita LXT batteries.



Reduce the Hitachi battery from this:



to this:



Add one of these:



That's an adapter bought via Ebay, usually about £10. The wires as supplied are unterminated, I prefer uninsulated crimps as I perceive them to be better than the usual red/blue/yellow preinsulated ones.

[cheb]

The drill body has to be split, sometimes the chuck and nose ring don't have to come off, this one does. The screw pictured is a left hand thread and stops the chuck unscrewing when the drill is used in reverse. My method for removing chucks is an allen key and a hammer.



Split and with the adapter wiring fitted. Some you can fit without splitting the drill, sometimes it's easier to split the thing:



The terminals on this one can be pushed on and then nipped down:



Reassembled, waiting for the hot glue:

[cheb]

Hot glued and with battery attached:



I'll test it for a month or so in normal use and then shift it on.

[Skub]

Top recycling and ingenuity. Bodgeneering is also a cool word.

[DefTrap]

Yeah I was watching a YouTube where a guy did exactly that (the web now knows that I'm a shed-drill-messer-geek and is spamming me furiously ) and it seemed a good way of getting some more life out of these perfectly serviceable tool bodies.

[cheb]

A really trivial niggle is that the variety of cordless tools only really blossomed when Li-ion became the standard power supply. Previous to that it's mostly drills, saws and bizarre specialist things.

[cheb]

If anyone wants this with or without the adapter then message me.