Help with Macbook Air - Water Damaged
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Hi all,
My GF decided that her MBA needed a wash with a nice cup of tea, and it went fairly deep inside.
I managed to get the thing working by doing an SMC reset in the end, but the battery won’t charge now. I replaced the battery but i still have the same problem. After inspecting the mono and internal bits there is a fair bit of water damage on the I/O board (the board that connects the charger port to the motherboard). Do any of you know of any good cleaning solutions to try and clean this? I thought about maybe pure alcohol, but didn’t know if this was a good idea or not seeing as it still works fine at the moment, but not on the battery.
Any ideas would be great.
Cheers
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Water damage is a pain! the longer the components have power to them from the mains or battery the more damage can be caused. if you ever spill or drop a device into liquid you want to remove power as quickly as possible, nowadays it’s harder with iphones being pretty sealed etc.
Anyway onto the actual cleaning, for water damaged phones I bath them in pure IPA in an ultrasonic cleaner then start identifying damaged components (if any). And that is only for good friends as most people seem to drop them into toilets! lol
IPA is fine to use on the components… i use it all the time on just about every job i do! even down to cleaning the pci-e connectors on my rigs, it evaporates quickly, cleans really well and imo smells great :) just make sure you have no power to the board. If you could take some decent pics of the board i may be able to offer further advice.
Good luck -
Thanks for your help. I had a google and found what you mean, I was thinking, beer + PCB can’t be good lol. I will get some ordered and give it a good clean at the weekend. The Macbook is still in warranty also so I will see if the water sensors have changed colour and if not, see what a ‘genius’ can do.
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Lol naa beer is about 98% water anyway :) we want isopropyl alcohol.
Thankfully I have never had to deal with a genius of the apple variety lol
If you find some and it’s silly money give me a shout and I’ll mail you a small bottle, I buy it in 5ltr bottles, I think Maplin charge about £15 a litre. -
From what i have seen and heard, genius is a bit to far from the truth! Cheers mate, I just ordered a spray can from ebay for around a fiver, will this do the trick do you think?
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I find spray a little harder to work with but it should do the trick. I like liquid and a syringe or pipette for a more precise application.