A couple of years ago I purchased a Craftsman CMCBL710D1 lightweight yard blower for my wife so she could quickly clean our front porch. Well, after seeing how well it worked I decided to see if a more powerful blower would work for me. I had recently bought a Craftsman gas blower but it sure was a hassle to crank it up for really small jobs.
I went to my local Lowes and found a blower/trimmer combo (Craftsman CMCK497P1) that used the same V20 battery, and it was on sale. It had almost the same CFPM as my gas blower so I decided to give it a try. Over the next few months I became convinced that Craftsman’s V20 powered yard tools would work for me. Since then I have standardized on the Craftsman V20 yard and power tools. I have purchased several power tools and added more batteries when I find them on sale. By having a selection of V20 batteries, 1.5-5 Ah, I can tackle anything my yard can throw at me.
Problem with Dead Batteries
Back in the fall of 2024 I started having issues with some of the batteries. I had a few batteries that showed fully charged but would not power the blowers. I contacted Craftsman warranty support and they promptly replaced the batteries. It was a super simple process that was handled by opening a support ticket on craftsman.com. Here is the direct link Craftsman Support Link. Replacements showed up in about a week. They did not want the old batteries back. I thought I would take one apart one day to see what had failed. Before I could do that, the bad batteries started working again. It was probably a month since they were replaced. I said to myself, “how strange?” Here is the video that covered that experience,
Getting back to the story
With fall in the air, I drive my neighbors crazy by blowing off my yard and driveway every day or so. The oak and pecan trees make a pretty good mess that goes on for months. I grabbed a battery and put it in the blower, pulled ther trigger and ….. nothing. The blower didn’t work… Dead Battery. I grabbed another and same thing, dead battery. I put those aside and found others that worked and did my yard.
When I recharged the batteries the next time I had two more dead batteries. I said to myself, “It can’t be happening again? What am I doing to cause the batteries to die?”
After going back over the last times the batteries were charged pointed to two specific chargers and they happen to be the same model, CMCB101. These chargers acted differently than the others. On my other chargers, the green LED blinks when it is charging and goes to a solid green when charged. On the suspect chargers, the green LED turns off when the batteries are “charged.” Of course I haven’t read the manual on the chargers, so I am not sure if that is the problem but it sure seems to happen on those two chargers.
I will take them out of my rotation to see if that fixes the problem.
The next issue is how to get the dead batteries working again. What worked for me was to put them in a Craftsman V20 drill, on the first pull of the trigger the light flickered and the motor started to spin and then stopped. The second pull of the trigger started the drill and must have “restarted” the battery. When I moved the battery to my blower, it worked perfectly. I repeated the process for three others batteries and used them to clean the yard. I charged them again on the “good” chargers and they worked great!
If you are having charged V20 batteries that act like they are dead, this might work for you.
I made a video on my experience. You can check if on the Trez’s Tech Youtube channel or view it below.
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