Dead Bosch 36V Battery?

So I figured I'd just drop this little bit of info here...

I had a 36V Bosch battery which would not charge... when I pushed the power level button a very faint single bar was visible. When I'd put it on the charger it would show only the red light and wouldn't charge at all. I figured the battery sat long enough to discharge past the half way point to where the charger just couldn't bring it back. Soon pressing the battery level button showed no lights. Totally dead.

So I bought a Noco Genius 10 charger for my boat/car batteries and it has a repair mode for 12V. I disassembled the Bosch battery and connected the charger directly to the battery leads and set the charger to repair mode for the night. Came back the next morning and the battery level light was at one bar! Reassembled the battery, threw it on the charger and it charged right up! 

What I also noticed is that if the battery didn't charge, I could have replaced the individual Lithium batteries for about $30 and reassembled. I also suspect this technique could work with other LI batteries/voltages.

Hope this helps someone somewhere sometime!

Happy Drilling...

I had a lightweight panasonic for years (for ground-up applications) that had similar problems on occasion. Found that the soldered connections between battery cells would sometimes fail, likely from too much dragging up the wall, causing them to break. This happened to several batteries but I was always able to take them apart and fix 'em up like new with a little careful soldering. Probably not a safe thing to do, but it worked.