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TDI SL Factory Battery Pack Vdc Differences


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2 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Jim, would it help to just shim the back end of the battery pack to push it forward in the housing and cause better contact?  That would be a lot easier (safer and also reversible) than playing around with the business end of the pack.  Or have you already tried that?

 

Tried that, then it dawned on me that what that does is make it worse. There's a litle "kink" in the contact at the back of the battery enclosure. That kink is what actually contacts the battery contact. If you push the pack in too far, the plastic of the battery pack pushes against the leg of the contact, lifting that kink off the pack contact. The position of that RNB pack is somewhat critical....primarily because the pack contact is recessed too far into the end of the case. You can see the problem by comparing a factory case to the RNB case. I can solve it by soldering a contact onto the RNB pack contact to raise it up a little. They should have just used a White's pack as the case for their Li-ion battery.

Jim

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I was disappointed when White’s passed on the opportunity to boost the battery power on the TDI SL Special Edition back up to what it used to be on the TDI Pro. It was considered but apparently they feel the higher power results in an unacceptably higher failure rate. The old 14.4 volt TDIs did have a lot of returns under warranty as I took advantage of a near endless supply of factory refurbished units when I was a dealer. You would think the solution would be to upgrade whatever components were needed to alleviate that issue, but apparently White’s does not think it worth the investment. Can’t take that much as plenty of people do the power boost on their own and you almost never hear of ill effects by doing so. Don’t know, but it is a shame White’s decided to go safe with TDI and downgrade it from what it used to be instead of taking it to the next level. Kudos though for keeping it light and affordable.

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Ya know, Steve, I'm guessing the reason is not the failure rate on the SL's....it's that uninformed people would surely stick that pack in their DFX, MXT, GMT, etc., thinking it would help their performance, and disaster would result, damaging Whites reputation.

jim

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Ha!...we quit letting the stupid pay for the consequences of their actions a long time ago, as much as I agree with you.

Jim

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Aloha All,  Thank you so very much for all of the awesome responses.  All with such great technical information! 

Going out in the field tomorrow, so I'll use the battery pack as my primary and the NiMh just as a backup

The upgrades need to wait until next week.

Let you know if i find any "shiny."

Stay safe.

 

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  • 6 months later...

If you mean can you open it and charge them separately.... not normally. It’s a sealed pack. However, it can be opened... see the video below about the NiCad pack. It does use separate cells internally, but they are wired together. Doing anything with them would require some cutting and soldering.

 

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Mine was glued, so I had to cut the glue to open it. But, To raise the voltage a little, one can replace one or two of the AA batteries and put inn ls14500 batteries that have 3.7 volt. 14.2 volt with one ls14500 or 16.4 volt with two ls14500. 

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The problem with both Ni-cad, and NiMH batteries is that the nominal voltage is 1.2, not 1.5 like carbon and alkaline batteries. So, if you use them, and can only get 8 batteries in the pack, the nominal voltage of the pack is less than 12v. That definitely robs you of depth in the TDI's. You can charge the Ni-cads and NiMH's to a slightly higher voltage (1.37v),  but they drop to the 1.2v pretty quickly.

Jim

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