Norbyx,
It is my turn to pick on you now since you feel it is foolish to pay extra for a factory made Li Ion setup. So, here goes. To begin, you mentioned a person could use a $5 charger, but you use a $300 that even needs a $100 supply.
I must of missed something because if the cheap one is good enough for everyone else, why change
? Worse yet, you spend $400 plus for a charger setup and then say the RNB battery is expensive
?? Hmmmmm.
See how easy it is to twist things?? I really am not trying to pick on you, but in my opinion, the RNB batteries are not as expensive as you might feel they are. Remember, the owner of RNB has a business, overhead, advertizing, and all that goes with trying to produce a product. He has to back his produce if he does have a failure. None of that is free, so that cost has to be factored in. Then there is selling the units wholesale to dealers, so that drops the price he can charge the dealer. After all, no one is going to pay more to a dealer if they can get it for a lower price from the company. Also, no dealer is going to stock a battery they can't make some profit on.
As for the RNB battery by itself, they are cheaper than the battery and charger assembly. So, a second battery does cost less.
Now as for building a single battery setup that an individual might do, well, I would appreciate it if you would do that and include all the charges for shipping for the components and see where it ends up.
Before I bought the RNB unit, I called and talked to the owner of the company and grilled him on the specifics of his battery because I care about my equipment. Like you, I have gone through trying junk batteries and decided I don't need them. On the other side of the coin, I also felt I wanted to use Li Ion batteries in my TDI SL.
I agree, anyone can build up a different battery pack but they better put it some form of a case to make sure it doesn't leak and can't touch the pc board in any way. Rather than try to build a plastic housing with the proper connections to the pc board, I elected to take a factory battery housing and modify it to hold 3 of the right size Li Ion batteries, which are the 18650 size. That took some chopping and even then, I elected to trim off the top part of the case enough for the batteries to fit. I then had to glue a thin piece of plastic on top to keep the batteries from leaving the housing.
Now, are you thinking about packing a package of the parts in a kit and selling them? Will you pay for repairs if someone takes your plans and messes up and melts down their detector? It is easy to do. I am assuming you will use 18650 size batteries which are the ones rated to 2900 ma. I absolutely don't recommend using the 14500 size. Went through a bunch of them with close to half simply failing prematurely. Won't make that mistake again.
As for guys building up packs, I remember a guy sent me a GS 4 and asked me to fix it because he tried to convert his battery setup to a Li Ion type but when he plugged in his battery he didn't notice the Tamiya connector was wired differently than the one he had installed on his detector. Yes, some Tamiya's come with the red wire on the left and others come with the red wire on the right. Don't match things correctly, and you let the smoke out, just like the GS 4 owner did. Oh yeah, he blamed the guy who sold the connectors to him.
Everyone likes to save money so I can understand your willingness to help those who want to try. I wish you the best and hope no one tries to come after you because their detector quit working.
BTW, this is why I don't build coils for others or battery packs for others for that matter. So, I will agree with you that you can save money by building your own. Having already done that and knowing the problems involved, I will still buy the more expensive RNB system for my preferred detectors and I have a bunch of detectors (40 maybe), but only a handful of them are White's units.
Reg
