Battery Substitution

About nine years ago I purchased an 18V Aldi 3 piece pole hedger. Recently it has been playing up and only running for around 20 seconds before cutting out. Given its age I suspect the battery is end of life. Making enquires Aldi have changed their battery design so that is out. Maybe a repack then? Nope, dead end there too.


Ok, I have some 18 volt Ryobi garden tools and batteries, I’ll splash and buy a new one. I go down to the purveyor of these tools and on trying it out it was so long and heavy that I couldn’t control it well enough to be safe.


Back home I mulled it over as to how could use a Ryobi battery. I had a couple of dodgy designs before coming up with this solution. The problem is how to secure the battery. I had a spare Ryobi charger which secures the battery. I isolated the electronics in that, stripped the batteries and electronics from the Aldi battery box and ended up with this. It ain’t pretty but it works.

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Good to see someone fighting back against planned obsolescence.

Don't know if this helps, but I recently bought a secondhand Bosch cordless drill. After it arrived, I put the battery in, pulled the trigger, seemed to have plenty of power, so put it away.

Last week I dug it out to see how long it would run. About 2 minutes before it cut out. Spare battery was better, but not much. A bit miffed, I downloaded the manual to get an idea of the specs, charge time, etc. Found a section detailing what to do when the battery is stored for a long time - and noted the symptoms would be similar to what I had, short charge time, short run time. Procedure says to run the battery FLAT, then charge. Rinse and repeat 5 or 6 times. (of course let them cool between steps)

At the end of this, I get about 30 minutes of runtime, and charging takes around 35. A bit down from new, but more than usable. These are NiCds, so similar procedure might apply if yours are too. :dunno:

For NiCad batteries that sounds like procedure for avoiding NiCad memory effect such as you described. My battery was a Lithium Ion and I suspect given its age that one or more cells were failing under load.

Lithium Ion batteries can also suffer from a problem where they won’t charge if the voltage falls below a certain threshold.