I have a pretty new, pretty nice Dewalt cordless drill (DCD791). I haven't used it much, but today my wife needed help drilling a giant auger into the ground to make holes for plants. There were lots of rocks and roots in this ground. Over the course of a few hours, I drilled maybe 50-100 holes, with the clutch at the highest torque setting 15 (speed setting 1). Pretty much every hole I caught a root or rocks many time, and the clutch was engaging a LOT. I tried to keep the engagement intervals short, but it still adds up I guess. At some point near the end, I noticed that if in free air I spun the auger, and then abruptly stopped, it would rattle a little bit and sort of bounce back on the rotation axis after stopping (only a very small amount). I don't know if it was always like that or not. And now I notice that the chuck has a small amount of rotational play (maybe 5 degrees?) when the drill is powered off. Again... not sure if it was always like that.
It still seems to drill fine and the clutch still seems to work. But I can't shake the feeling that something feels looser about the chuck. Is there any sort of simple test I can do to confirm or reject these feelings?