Accessories

Makita BHP451 Hammer Driver Drill
This is the best driver drill I have every used. Outstanding in all functions. Light weight with long battery life.

Drill is a fantastic, light and comfortable at work! FAST CHARGING!
I am satisfied with speedy delivery. Drill is a fantastic, light and comfortable at work!

To raise and lower my Pop-Up camper
I bought this for an unusual use. I have a Fleetwood Evolution Pop-Up camper with AC on the roof. The top is raised with a crank from the back. It is somewhat of a pain to raise it, so I contacted the dealer about an electric lift kit. I was told that it required a gear ratio change, and would run about $1000 total installed. The tech at the dealer recommended I get a heavy duty cordless drill instead, for less than 1/3 the cost, so I bought this one.

It works great! Set to the low speed it has no problem at all lifting the top, and lowering it is even easier. As a plus, I can also use it to extend and retract the levelers on the four corners, which the factory electric lift kit does not do. Naturally it will get a lot of more conventional use as well, but it is perfect for my special application.

Makita cordless drill
I have other Makita drills, and I love them all. This one is also a very nice drill setup.

Great Drill
Purchased this drill last fall before beginning to replace the aluminum wiring in my 40 year old home. It replace a 15 year old (approx.) 9.6 volt Makita which still worked fine; but it needed new batteries. It seemed a good time to trade up.

The new drill is about 1 pound heavier than my previous drill. Considering that I've moved from 9.6 to 18 volts and added a hammer function this seems to be a quite reasonable tradeoff. While noticeably heavier the new drill seems better balanced than the old drill (stick battery in the handle). I didn't find it tiring to use.

In the past several months I have done a lot of heavy drilling and also drove a lot of dry-wall screws. The drill has all the power I needed to make short work of up to 1" holes often through multiple 2x4's. Since I often moved between drilling and driving screws I liked the ability to make that change quickly without changing the clutch setting.

Someone else commented on chuck run-out and holding power. I didn't experience either of these problems. However, most of my drilling was done with a set of old Craftsman spade bits that had terrible run-out as purchased. My father was a machinist at the time I purchased the bits and re-ground the forged drill flats true to the axis of the bit solving this problem. It also gives me bits that I know run true as a fair test of a chuck. There are a lot of bad bits out there.

My biggest disappointment was the case. The case my drill arrived in was designed to hold both the drill and an impact wrench. It is huge. Since I didn't purchase the impact wrench about 40-50% of the space is wasted. I did buy the Makita 18v flash light. It doesn't seem like it would have taken much creativity to design a case that would hold the drill and either the impact wrench or the light. (Listening out there Makita??) The only other complaint is the lack of adjustability of the light. I did a fair amount of work in dark (overhead) spaces. The light is fine when using the (longer) spade bits. But when I was driving screws with a short Phillips bit the light was no help at all.

Overall this is a great drill and I look forward to using it for a long time.