I agree 100% with dsmacd; one tool they left off the list for this job is needle-nosed vice grips to tug and push and pry and wriggle and twist that stoopid tray out of there. Man, everything about Mac's optical drive sucks! I've got 2 & 4-year-old machines with bad slot drives, (all the same; won't eject; two replacements same!) and 8 & 10 year-old machines with well-used tray drives, still working like a charm. Apple, get the message; it's too small a package to cram in such mechanical complexity. Go back to a reliable tray drive!

This is retarded! Why bother with the additional strain on everything taking off a connector and cable wrapped around other stuff, for no reason? You have to remove the heat sensor from the drive anyway, just take it off and leave the connector and cabling and motherboard alone!

Please correct me if I'm missing something here, but doesn't this seem a totally unnecessary step?

Steps 14 & 15; If you remove the top screw, and just loosen the bottom screw you can rotate the optical drive clip out of the way, tighten it, then screw the top screw back in to hold the logic board down for later trying to remove the connector. You also save three more parts kicking around on the desktop.

What possible reason can there be for dis-connecting the thermal sensor connector from the logic board, when step 26 or so tells you to pry the sensor off the drive? Why stress a logic board connector, then try de-routing the cable from underneath the board, when you're going to disconnect it at the other end anyway? Why not leave it on the board and just pry it off the drive? (And the same with the hard drive temp sensor.)