DC-In board arrived yesterday. Gonna check my toolkit before I start… Think I need some proper spudgers…
Replacing a MagSafe board only typically requires Philips 0 and Torx T6 screwdrivers, and a nylon probe (spudger) is also useful in some cases. Hardest part is disconnecting everything and extracting the board to get to the MagSafe board connector on the other side, but even that isn’t too difficult.
Had to do some repairs to my MacBook Air yesterday. This machine was my first brand new Mac purchase, but it has been dreadful since new and the support from Apple was almost non existent. I ended up repairing a lot of its issues myself as a result. Since it was purchased as a CTO in 2012 (8GB Memory and 512GB SSD optioned on at purchase), it’s needed the following repairs within the warranty period:
- Logic Board, for intermittent video lockups and kernel panics.
- Battery, failed within the Apple Limited Warranty with 11 months and 300 cycles
- Key Cap, came off while typing
- MagSafe Adapter, frayed the length of the cable
- Trackpad, stopped responding to clicks
And outside of the warranty period:
- Another MagSafe Adapter, second one started to deteriorate near the MagSafe head
- Another Battery, once again it failed prematurely about 12 months after the first one
And now it needs another Logic Board because the onboard Thunderbolt controller has failed, so I can’t use any Thunderbolt devices or the external Mini DisplayPort.
Had to replace the Battery again yesterday. Now I’m looking to palm the machine off relatively cheaply and be done with it.
Still haven’t decided what computer to replace it with though. I have managed to source a 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13" (with Force Touch) that took an entire cup of coffee through the keyboard. The Logic Board is salvageable and works fine, but the Top Case assembly would need replacement.
It’s difficult to justify spending a few hundred on a machine that sustained such extensive damage, but if the board is workable and reliable, then I suppose a couple of hundred for a 2015 model machine doesn’t sound that bad.
Working on resurrecting a wine infused MacBook Air 11" for use as a basic work and messing around machine. Not looking at spending anything on this one, so I’m experimenting with a lesser known technique for repairing damaged keyboards.
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I heard you could put them through the dishwasher too… top rack only of course.
Performed the same keyboard submersion cleaning process on a 13" MacBook Air (Mid 2014) the other week to remove some coffee ingress. 1.4GHz Core i5, 4GB Memory and 256GB SSD. When I found this computer the screen, board and battery were missing, removed for use in another machine, so all that remained was the enclosure and keyboard!
The cleaning was a success however and I was able to reunite the enclosure with a suitable screen, battery and board. Speakers are a little crackly but since I haven’t adhered them down yet, that’s to be expected.
I recently gave the 2014 Pro Retina I repaired earlier in this thread to my brother for his studies, so this machine has become what I call The Daily Driver.
Second machine, or The Weekend Cruiser. Simple objective for this one - make something stupidly fast. MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), 2.7GHz Quad i7 with 8MB Cache, 16GB DDR3-1600 Memory, 500GB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1GB. At least it will be. The memory and SSD are coming.
This machine was a rebuild with components graciously supplied by Apple under warranty. A new Logic Board, enclosure, trackpad and keyboard went in two weeks ago. A new battery went in soon after.
Rounding out this week, I completed the iPhone 5C I started working on over a year ago. A suitable donor with a damaged screen and board became available and since I’d already purchased a new screen and had a suitable board, we had a match.
Next, I need to investigate sourcing a Logic Board for another MacBook Pro Retina (2014) with a dead CPU and start looking into an extremely risky repair - extracting the Lithium-Ion battery cells from a Retina MacBook Pro so I can perform a keyboard cleaning. The board needs some small capacitors in the battery charging circuit replaced as well but I’ll attend to those later.
Completely out of the league above… but - 4 months ago I picked up my brother’s old BluRay player that “wasn’t working”. He has Down Syndrome, and eats through VCRs/DVD Players etc because he uses the disks as coasters/back scratchers etc. (Mum hadn’t even realised it was a BluRay when she purchased it - she picked up 2 of the Panasonic BD83’s cheap at Harvey’s a while ago.) So, finally yesterday I sat down and opened it up, hoping I would just have to clean the lens. Found that the lens was basically hidden by the drive’s enclosure… spent ages trying to extract it from the chassis without success… but eventually found I could slide the lens mechanism to the edge, where I immediately found - a huge dust bunny…! 
Bit of compressed air, Isopropyl alcohol… and viola - I’ve got myself a working BluRay Smart Player. Thinking it will replace my MacMini 1.83C2D… (except that the BluRay only connects to USB drives - not network drives… meaning it will be a pain to add new content… 
)
Side note - Purchased first ever BluRay - Rogue One!
For my next fete, I hooked up my brother’s (formerly mine) AppleTV Gen1 that wont play any movies… only to find that I left the remotes at his (my parents) house in Horsham… $29 to get a new one… or $4.50 for a Chinese plastic knock-off… Grab every remote in the house and press every button in the blind hope that I’ll find something that works… but no… (Learn that I can use ANY remote to “learn” the right signals - but need to first have a working remote!) So, I then learn I can use Rowmote App on my iPhone to control an AppleTV - just needed to download a file, access via SSH, use some terminal strings… Viola! AppleTV connected, and awaiting further attention… Yay.
All that, and took my son to see Lego Batman in 1 day. A movie full of lego Daleks! Err, sorry - those British metal things your nerd friends know all about.
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Any chance you’re looking at selling the 5C?
Two years already? Anyone else out there still repairing their stuff?
Decided to pull an overnighter and finish a couple of rebuilds I’ve been meaning to do.
I found a PlayStation 3 console with controller at a Salvation Army store last week for $25, and figured it could be interesting, seeing as I haven’t owned a Sony console before.
It worked, but needed some attention. Other than cleaning the console inside and out, I removed the motherboard and replaced the thermal paste with Arctic Silver Ceramique, replaced the CR2032 CMOS / Clock Battery, removed some rust from the motherboard shield and swapped the standard 80GB drive for a 500GB one.
Combining it with the Logitech Driving Force GT wheel for PS3/PS4/PC ($8 from the same Salvos) and an ex-rental copy of Test Drive Unlimited 2, it should hopefully be a fun machine.
The second repair was an interesting one, because it involved a technique I haven’t tried before.
Someone dropped in this Toshiba Tecra 700CT to someone I know for recycling. (Pentium 120MHz, 16MB RAM, 1GB HDD, etc.) It looked immaculate from the outside, but these machines are notorious for broken hinges, and this one had cracked and was missing some plastic around one of the brass screw inserts near the right hinge.
I’d come across a technique on YouTube earlier that involved mixing Baking Soda / Bicarb Soda and Super Glue to make a hard and durable filler. After loosely sticking the remaining pieces in place, I packed the gaps and built up a layer of bicarb soda around the boss, then flooded it with shockproof (rubber-reinforced) cyanoacrylate glue. It set almost instantly, and the hinge is now rock solid and working great.
I love this technique. It works so well, the powder is easy to shape, mould and fill, it sets instantly on contact with the glue, it’s strong enough for these light to moderate stress applications (and shock resistant glue is even better), and the needed materials - baking soda and super glue - are cheap and readily available.
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Not doing much these days on “modern machines”, just doing the upgrade path on a pair of MacPros (1.1 and 3.1). Most of my time is just cleaning and getting retro machines running, and lamenting my BondiBlue and Cube no longer booting (yes, I’ll look at them eventually).
What I have been doing lately is rebuilding Apple Watches. Slicing off broken digitiser glass and gluing on a new one, or parting those beyond resurrection.
Had to perform some repairs to mum’s Late 2009 iMac 21.5" yesterday. She said it froze while running, then wouldn’t start up again. Sounded like a standard Hard Drive issue, normally a fairly simple and inexpensive repair.
Of course, Apple used a proprietary temperature sensor cable that’s specifically keyed for a Seagate drive only, meaning none of the WD or Hitachi drives I kept in stock were usable. Even after I purchased a Seagate drive to use, because it didn’t have Apple’s customised firmware, the SMC still didn’t accept it and spun the fans up to maximum speed accordingly.
Either way, it’s mostly fixed. We ended up Installing a kernel extension to manage the fans based on the drive’s internal SMART temperature sensor. (Another $80 for an OWC sensor kit wasn’t in our budget, nor was the 1-2 week lead time.)
I still need to repair my brother’s 2014 Retina MacBook Pro as well somehow - the trackpad button doesn’t work, and it’s a complete top case replacement, since the battery is glued in and the trackpad isn’t available as a separate service part. At least $500 at an AASP. Still looking at options for that one.
So… as far as electronics companies go, Apple sits comfortably atop my personal shitlist.
But I’m sure everyone would rather a good, fun story too.
Take a look at what I found sitting atop an electronics recycling bin while driving to a retro-computing group meet last Friday night -
A Nintendo 64 with power supply, and Goldeneye 007. It was raining heavily that night, and even with the heater on in the car, both were still dripping with water when I arrived at the meet an hour later.
So later that night, it all came apart -
And because Nintendo 64’s are seemingly Nokia 3310 levels of indestructible, it cleaned up perfectly fine.
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Makes me almost regret selling my N64 back in the 00’s.
I had the same issue with my late-2013 Retina MacBook Pro and replaced the (also expanded) glued-in battery myself just fine. Cost me $133 for the battery from iFixit AU, then another $20ish on “supplies”, which in this case was a bit of isopropyl alcohol. Used a few tools I had lying around.
Not something I’d recommend, especially when Apple claims they’ll do it for you for $189 and get rid of the expanded battery, which turned out to be the most troublesome part of the whole ordeal, but definitely something to consider if you can’t do without the machine for a few days or whatever.
Pics so you know I’m not making any of this up:
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I just dealt with this same expanded battery issue a few weeks ago, and damn if my coworker didn’t try to open it up and deal with it, it still had AppleCare left!
…but he’s a software engineer, not a hardware guy. I pulled the battery out and it is now running off the charger, but obviously, we’re not sending it to Apple. Coworker was sheepish.
@bennyling That’s still $30ish in your pocket - not a bad thing if you are comfortable doing the job.
The only other issue I guess is the quality of iFixit’s battery vs Apple’s. Not sure these days - I know back in the clambook era there were plenty of not-great replacement batteries available (ie ex China). But given iFixit’s position in the Apple after-market arena, they would need to be offering quality parts to please their niche (but I’m guessing sizeable) customer base.
Looking at your pics… reminds me it’s probably time to open up my MacBookPro and squirt some air around.
The $189 applies for battery-related issues, but increases significantly if the issue is unrelated to the battery. That seems to be the case; it physically clicks but doesn’t register.
I could certainly see if I could pull some strings and get it repaired at the battery replacement price, since the top case is otherwise fine - however I’ve repaired the Logic Board before (post #44), which could cause some problems at Apple. An AASP could probably do it, albeit at a somewhat higher price, since it often costs them more to purchase the part alone than the Apple Store, and that doesn’t cover their labour and shop time.
Otherwise, DIY removal and replacement it is.
From experience, iFixit batteries are good. I’d trust them equally as much as an Apple battery, but with a better warranty and customer service. (I purchase most of my basic service tools through them.)
I have access to the 2-power brand of batteries (sold via Battery World) as well, which apparently use Japanese manufactured Li-Ion cells and seem decent, but I’ve haven’t installed enough of them in Apple notebooks to be completely confident yet.
How’s the battery health on that unit? Apple will do a top case when they do a battery @$289 if the battery is under 80%.
Edit: Should have read while thread. LOL.
My wife has a 2016 MacBook where the battery died and because we were 1 year out of AppleCare, they wanted to charge us $400 to replace.
We ended up buying her a new 2019 MacBook Pro 13 inch touchbar, one week before the new MacBook Pros were announced - but on checking, I don’t think her model was the one upgraded.
Where did you take it? They lied to you.
Battery replacement should be less than $300.
P.S. the non-TouchBar models were removed from sale with TouchBar replacing (for $100 more in AUD) but also with a quad core CPU and newer KB version.
I wouldn’t doubt it if it were an AASP; assuming we use what we used to charge as a template:
- Labour (x1 Hr), $140.00
- Bottom Case w/ Battery, $197.00 ex. (x1.1, to cover $19.70 GST), $216.70 inc.
About $356.70. However if the AASP applies a markup on the part, say a 1.3 or 1.4 multiplier instead of 1.1, it would be $396.10 or $415.80. The prices make sense.
What doesn’t make sense - and I could be missing something here - is how a 2016 MacBook could be one year outside of a 3-year AppleCare warranty in 2019. They were revised on April 19th 2016, so even if it was purchased on day one, as of today, it could be about 3 months out at best.
Unless we’re referring to the 1-year Apple Limited Warranty? Even so, Australian Consumer Law should cover that machine for 3 years anyway. (Apple originally covered them for 2 years under ACL, but I believe this was revised a couple of years ago.)
Of course if the Battery was consumed (greater than 1000 cycles) it would be an out-of-warranty paid replacement either way.
But I have been out of the loop for 6 months or so now, so I’m getting a little hazy on the specific details.
I don’t understand how Apple doesn’t provide “battery replacement” pricing for parts which include batteries when the repair the customer is seeking is advertised at $289 on Apple’s website. 
I chatted with @Erwin last night - turns out it’s a 2015 not 2016.