replaced trackpad and backlight and cleaned, etc...

My niece has a late 2008 Macbook Pro 15".

It is out of warranty. She accidentally spilled some soda on it... not enough to get into the motherboard and cause it to fail... but enough to make a mess and to cause keys to stick and the keyboard's backlight to fail.

She also had a crack on her trackpad from when she dropped something onto it awhile back. It's been that way for some time and it still worked but it was time to clean this up. I know it doesn't sound like it but she is usually very careful with her things. ha.

I happen to have a trackpad leftover from a 2009 Macbook Pro 17" unibody case (it wasn't an entire laptop, just a badly dented 17" uppercase, a good keyboard and good trackpad).

I used ifixit as a reference. Lots of good helpful photos are there to show me what to expect.

The trackpads were identical between the Macbook Pros. But their ribbon cables were not. A sticky tape hides the ribbon connection on the underside of the trackpad. After peeling that back, the ribbons were swapped.


*her cracked trackpad is on the left (can't see the crack in this photo). The good 17" MBP trackpad is on the right (with its ribbon already removed). I swapped the ribbon from her 15" MBP trackpad to the trackpad on the right.

There were ALOT of screws to remove the keyboard. I believe that is perhaps the sole reason that this keyboard is not sold separately. Its just too time consuming for them to remove and then install to be worth selling it separate from the uppercase.

The 17" keyboard however is NOT compatible with the 15" keyboard. So I couldn't swap those. The ribbons on the 17" MBP don't come near enough to the connection on the 15" MBP motherboard. So I had to clean up the messy keyboard and reuse it. Used a little rubbing alcohol and a terry cloth hand towel. I had to pop some keys off to get in there really good.




The soda had made a mess of the LED sheet that lies below the keyboard. Unlike the keyboard, the keyboard backlight (the black sheet that is underneath the keyboard itself) is swappable between a 17" and 15" MBP. So I replaced that with the backlight from the 17" MBP. The ribbons are in slightly different positions but the ribbon cable still reached the motherboard connection.

I forgot to get a good photo of that backlight piece, but you may be able to see the black sheet in the lower left of this photo. Thats the backlight sheet.



Anyway, got it all apart, fixed it, got it all back together and it works. Lots of parts but it is not as difficult as it appears. Was actually a lot of fun and there were no complications.

tray I use for keep track of all the screws. This is invaluable.



Point is, if you are out of warranty, it is pretty easy to swap keyboard and trackpads, etc. The difficult part is probably just in finding the replacement parts. Luckily I had what I needed already.

Thanks,

Ben

 

You are one brave man.

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Wow great job! I've completely striped down many PC laptops before, but NEVER had one with nearly that many screws!

Hey we have the same fan remote control, and a similar ottoman and post and rep counts LOL.

 

Wow! + Rep for that one!