Posts: 20,381
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Joined: Sep 2007
Location: CinDay
09-24-2017, 03:07 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-24-2017, 03:08 PM by Steve N.)
Quit using their products soon after battery power first showed up, had been a Makita fan before that. Battery life was terrible, and they did not stand behind their product. Dewalt came out with their 18 volt answer to Mickie Mousekitas 12 volt of the day, and every pro I knew swapped almost overnight. I don't know anyone in trades who has gone back to them, the last migration has been split between Milwaukee, and Bosch. Surprisingly their 12 volts actually work for you, rather than against you. A lot of young guys don't remember the bad old days of Makita. I remember going into a house and a single guy would have two power strips full of chargers and always a battery waiting to charge sitting on it. Sometimes you couldn't find loose outlets to charge your own. Was an industry joke, but nobody was laughing.
Worst thing they can do is cook ya and eat ya
GW
Posts: 2,087
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Joined: Feb 2009
Location: Mechanicsville, Md
Ok, I may be the exception to all of this. In January 2009, I bought a Makita 18v drill and impact combo. It came with 2 small batteries (1.5 ah I believe). They were refurbed and bought from CPO. I used them almost everyday for a couple of years. Then sporadically. For the last 3 years, every day. I still have the original charger and batteries plus a third bought as a single in 2009. I have since bought additional tools and 3.0 ah and 4.0 ah batteries and a second charger. The drill crapped out last year but the impact is still going strong.
I no longer build museums but don't want to change my name. My new job is a lot less stressful. Life is much better.
Garry
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The older (no star) batteries have a well-documented design fault; regrettably there isn't much you can do to salvage them. Basically the circuit that talks to the charger is powered from a single cell--if that cell is dead or empty you can never charge the battery again, regardless of the state of the other cells. Lots of stuff on the interwebs about this problem.
I bought 2 "topbatt" brand replacement batteries for less than half the price of Makita brand, and they were 5Ah batteries instead of the stock 4Ah ones. So far they work great. A little tight getting on and off the tool but other than that they seem identical to the Makita batteries.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!" Arthur 'Big Guy' Carlson
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well, time for an update.
Before dropping more cash on batteries, I found one of the new chargers for a good price, all the batteries I had that failed on both old chargers seem to have charged just fine with the new one.
so, for now, at least, I think I'm good.
Thanks for all the tips and info.
I had read of the design issue on LXT batteries-wasn't aware the ones with the star had corrected it. Going forward, I'll make sure to only buy those.
Carry on.
