This afternoon I bought a Hitachi 12V cordless drill. It was a kit and
came with 2 batteries, a flashlight and charger. I plugged the charger
into a garage outlet and then put one of the batteries into the charger
and went into the house. T booklet says it should take about 30 minutes
to charge and it will shut off.
Well after abut 30 minutes I went back out to the garage and found it
filled with smoke and stinking like hell. The charger was still
sputtering and creating smoke. I unplugged the charger and after about
an hour the unit was still warm but could be handled. The shell of the
battery and the charger were both distorted from the heat and fused
together.
When I purchased the salesman made a point of letting me know that the
unit was guaranteed for 5 years. Little did I suspect that I would be
returning it within hours. Thankfully I had put the charger on the
cement floor so it did not do damage to anything else.
I would report it to the Product Safety Commission at
www.cpsc.gov/incident.html. It might be just a fluke with the one you
got but it might not. Recalls are not issued unless they know about it.
It might be your incident added to the pile to get something done if
there is a problem with the chargers. They already had one recall back
in 1997 for the 9.6v battery.
mike wrote:
> This afternoon I bought a Hitachi 12V cordless drill. It was a kit and
> came with 2 batteries, a flashlight and charger. I plugged the charger
> into a garage outlet and then put one of the batteries into the charger
> and went into the house. T booklet says it should take about 30 minutes
> to charge and it will shut off.
> Well after abut 30 minutes I went back out to the garage and found it
> filled with smoke and stinking like hell. The charger was still
> sputtering and creating smoke. I unplugged the charger and after about
> an hour the unit was still warm but could be handled. The shell of the
> battery and the charger were both distorted from the heat and fused
> together.
> When I purchased the salesman made a point of letting me know that the
> unit was guaranteed for 5 years. Little did I suspect that I would be
> returning it within hours. Thankfully I had put the charger on the
> cement floor so it did not do damage to anything else.
>