Episode: 3443
Title: HPR3443: Neuton battery replacement
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3443/hpr3443.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 23:32:19

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This is hacker public radio episode 3443 for Wednesday the 13th of October 2021.
Today's show is entitled Newton Battery Replacement.
It is hosted by Roen and is about 10 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summary is Roen describes replacing the battery in his Newton M 4.1 electric lawn mower.
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Hello, this is Roen, welcome to another episode of Hack Public Radio.
Today I'm going to be talking about replacing the batteries for a new
tron lawn mower, electric lawn mower.
I purchased this probably back in the early 2000s, 2004-ish.
I think it's traveled from house to house.
Actually it was at my parents for a while and I just recently got it back.
I know in my composting episode I talked about and we had long guys doing our lawn
but I think I'm now going to be taking that over.
The graph seems to be going crazy.
Oh, she's inside.
They were walking by with a dog looking for our little puppy who likes to run in the yard.
Now they're passing another neighbor with a bigger dog.
Anyway, so I'm now going to be doing our grass.
I think it's just been going crazy around the last year.
So I can't afford to have the graph.
People come as often as it needs to be mowed.
So I decided my parents didn't want the mower anymore.
So I got it back from them.
Unfortunately when I got it back,
and I figured the batteries were going to be dead.
It's been a while and I know they hadn't used it.
They didn't even have the sort of battery case that you slide into the mower.
I looked around to see you can't buy replacements anymore.
Neutron I think was bought out by DR or some other company.
And even if you can still find a website and it looks like you can still buy some of the
accessories but they're just not doing the batteries.
So I did find on eBay a battery case, just the case for around 40 bucks.
US that would fit in my model.
So I ordered that and I double checked to make sure that it would fit
when I got here.
And then I went on Amazon and I bought a, well you need two 12 volt batteries.
Because it runs a 24 volt.
I guess the ones that fit and I think the way it looks like perhaps neutron did it.
It was they had two 12 volt batteries you run in series.
So I ordered the Mighty Max battery NL 10-12, which was one of those ones that was
suggested on Amazon and seemed to have OK reviews.
So right now I just took the batteries out.
I'm actually going to register just there.
Redically you get a three extra month warranty, longer warranty.
I'm guessing that's not going to matter but it may.
And it did come with a little, so you have to of course jump to get up to 12 volts.
You have to run the batteries or excuse me to get up to 24 volts.
You have to take the two 12 volt batteries and connect them in series.
When I was looking on the Amazon site I thought it said that the battery,
the two batteries I was buying because I bought it at the set,
came with the jumper but it didn't.
Of course I hadn't actually looked in the case.
I hadn't opened up the case yet of the neutron case that I got off of eBay.
But when I did open it up there was, well it looks like the original
jumper so that you can run them in series.
Which is good because I actually had never even when I had it before.
I had just purchased an extra one so I could just swap them in and out and never had gotten
to a point of actually replacing the batteries.
So it was pleasantly surprised that that was in there.
The two batteries do fit as they set on the website.
So I sort of had to slide them part way into the case.
I just connected the jumper and now I'm about to connect the other two terminals.
And so the battery case not only holds the batteries but then it has a little circuit board
with an LED on it. It looks like a resistor and some other things so that you can plug
the charger into it and charge the batteries up.
So it makes it very nice. So having I guess to take it apart and charge each battery separately.
So I'm going to go ahead and do that now.
I'll edit it out if it ends up taking too long.
So now I'm going to do, if I remember correctly, I'm going to do positive first.
And that just slides on and take off the one.
The battery terminals came with little slide on plastic protectors.
So I stood them off and now I'm sliding on the negative.
Okay, theoretically I think they come charged.
I'm going to go ahead and put this on the charger.
It just slides in there. It feels pretty snug.
And then the case lid just sort of goes over top and clicks into place.
Well, if not soon to go, is that not that far enough or things not going in?
What's going on?
Actually, maybe I just need to just have things in the way.
I feel like it's lining up correctly.
In the upper corners.
Maybe I just need to, okay, I think I just need to screw it in now.
Looks like it's going on quite right now.
I see. Looks like one of the small wires that runs from the PCB board,
they sort of, they go to the terminals.
Like it was in front of the hole.
There's two holes that you, you line up with the lid so that you can screw,
screw this pipe and it was sort of in the way.
It takes care of the issue.
Yeah, it seems a little weird.
And I only did with unscrew the lid before.
I guess that's where they belong.
I seem to be having issues getting it back in place.
I think it's tightly as I want.
Now we'll see how that does.
I'm trying to squeeze.
This does use something, what's I start?
I got to find the, need to find the bit again because it's a star shaped bit to screw it in.
Which one was it?
I think it was like a t10 star shaped, I guess torqued in.
What I had that fit, I let this, it screws it in so that tools to be working.
I guess I should have put it, probably should have.
Maybe I'll do that.
I'm going to go get my voltmeter and nothing's blown up yet.
I'm assuming I'm doing things right.
I guess I should have put a voltmeter across it to make sure that I was actually seeing the 12 volts
across the battery.
I guess for thorough in the shakes and
adding out this show a little bit, I will be right back with my voltmeter.
Okay, well, after a 20 or 30 minute fruit research for, I think I have two multimeters,
one in analog and one is digital.
Analog as in, you know, the needle was analog.
It will measure DC voltage.
I can't find either of them, very frustrating.
You can hear my neighbor perhaps mowing his lawn in the background.
Anyway, I just decided to go ahead, I've got the charger out and plugged it in and the
LE readily de-like came on, stating that it's charging.
So I think right now I'm going to call this an episode, give this time to charge for a little bit,
and then maybe do another episode when I get the mower running.
So until then, thank you for listening to Hecker Public Radio.
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