How to Fix a Ryobi Battery That Won't Charge

Quick Fixes

Swap your charger or battery out to confirm the problem. Narrow down the problem before you assume the battery itself is to blame—it could simply be your charger that needs to be replaced. Use another Ryobi battery to confirm the charger in question works properly. Alternatively, you can use a different charger. If the battery also won’t charge there, you know the battery itself is the problem. If you don’t have the spare battery that came with your tool or you don’t have access to another charger, post online in a local social media group or reach out to a handy friend to ask if there’s a battery or charger you can borrow. Ryobi tools are exceptionally common, so someone should be able to help you out.

Contact Ryobi directly if the battery is less than 3 years old. All Ryobi batteries come with a 3-year limited warranty that explicitly covers failures to charge. If your battery won’t charge and it’s not past the 3-year mark, go to your nearest authorized Ryobi dealer or call 1-800-525-2579 and explain the situation. You’ll have a new battery in no time.

Clean the contacts on the battery with a dry cloth. The contacts are the two metal surfaces on the sides of the battery where it clicks into the charging port. These are the physical surfaces that allow electricity to flow into the battery, so if they’re dirty, wipe them clean and try charging the battery again. You shouldn’t need any cleaning solutions for this, but you can use baking soda and water if you’d like. Just make sure the terminals are 100% dry before putting them back in the battery. Do you see any corrosion? Battery corrosion looks like rusty or chalky residue and it’ll often appear on the contacts. If you see any kind of corrosion, you can clean it off with a wire brush, but you’re going to need to replace the battery sooner rather than later.

Kill the battery to reset it then re-charge it. If the battery isn’t charging but isn’t fully drained yet, you can reset it by using it until it dies entirely. Put the battery in the most energy-intensive Ryobi tool you own (that can accept the battery) and just run the tool until the battery fully dies. This will reset the battery so that both terminals charge evenly again. If this happens frequently, it’s likely that the power tool is drawing charge unevenly from the battery, which can make the charger think there’s something wrong with the battery. You may need to replace the tool soon.

Jumpstarting the Battery

Remove the cover of the battery by removing the screws. Use a Torx drill bit or screwdriver to remove the screws on the top of the battery. There is likely one screw hidden by a plastic cover. Pry that cover off with a flathead screwdriver to access and remove it. We’re going to cover this process for Ryobi’s 4-18v batteries (these are the batteries you’d find on drills, power tools, and smaller items). The same principles will apply to 40v batteries, although the minor details may be slightly different. Safety Warning: Do this at your own risk. This process involves disassembling the battery to charge the battery directly, which can be an electrical or fire risk. Do not continue with these steps if you smell anything burning, your battery becomes extremely hot, or you aren’t confident you can do this without hurting yourself, don’t push it. Warranty Warning: This process requires opening the battery, which voids the Ryobi warranty. If your battery is less than 3 years old, contact Ryobi for a free replacement instead of doing this.

Pull the top cover of the battery off to access the inside. Hold the bottom half of the charger firmly to keep the cover from breaking and pull the top cover off. Slowly increase your pull strength as you tug on the top half and jiggle it as needed until the cover comes off.

Inspect the battery motherboard to find the cell terminals. The flat green platform is the motherboard. Look for a red wire running from the backside of the motherboard to the metal contact point where the battery inserts into the charger. The red wire leads to the positive contact. Look on the opposite side of the battery for a white wire. The white wire leads to the negative contact. Is there a third terminal? This is a neutral contact point. You can ignore it. Is there no white wire? The metal plate with no wire is your negative contact in this case.

Use a multimeter to test the battery (optional). If you want to see if the battery is permanently dead, grab a multimeter. Set it to “Volts” and put the threshold at 20V. Pull the motherboard out of the bottom case (you may need to remove some clips) to access the battery cells. Touch the probes on the multimeter to the end of each cell. Test the cells one at a time to see what kind of readings you get. Are you getting 15v-20v readings on each cell? Your battery is solid! You should be able to continue this process to revive it. Is one of the battery cells unresponsive? The battery is permanently dead. You can stop what you’re doing and dispose of the battery.

Cut the end of any AC charger and strip the wires. Grab an old AC charger (like the kind you’d have lying around for an old shaver, laptop, or smartphone) and cut the end. Splice the two wires and pull them apart a bit so that the two wires can be moved independently. If you happen to have a low-voltage jumpkit, you can use that instead. Just connect the probes to any wires.

Plug the charger in and hold the positive wire to the positive terminal. Look closely at your two AC wires. The wire that is 100% black is your positive wire. Plug the charger in and hold the stripped end of the positive wire against the positive terminal (not the positive contact). The contact is the metal plate where the charger connects to the battery. The terminal is the flat metal plate where the wire that leads to the contact originates from.

Hold the negative wire against the negative contact. The wire on the charger that has any color on it or has tiny writing somewhere along the wire is your negative cable. Hold this against the negative terminal.

Wait 2-3 minutes and try charging your battery. Give your AC adapter a few minutes to send a tiny bit of charge to the battery. After a few minutes (or whenever your battery begins to get a little bit hot), unplug the AC adapter and set the top cover back on your battery (don’t screw it back together yet, though). If the battery charges, you’re good to go! Reassemble your battery and tighten the Torx screws. If it didn’t work, repeat the process. It might take the adapter a few rounds of charging to give the battery enough juice. If you cannot get the battery to start charging, it’s likely that the wiring in the battery is damaged and it’s no longer usable. Why does this work? If the Ryobi battery falls below a certain voltage threshold, the battery will be unable to send charge to the contacts when you plug it into a charger. This is a safety feature to prevent fully discharged batteries from drawing energy. By charging the terminals directly, you’ll give the battery enough juice to safely “catch” the voltage from the charger.