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The March 2015 update of Apple's 13" MacBook Air features fifth generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, resulting in slightly increased performance and battery life.

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Sticky thing on motherboard, space bar and trackpad problem

Hello team,

I spilled some orange juice on my MacBook Air (yeah I know...)

When opening the back of the computer you see something sticky on the motherboard. Since then, the USB ports are quite funny and space bar is taking some time to get back to place and trackpad has a weird click :-(

How do you think I should do ? Clean the motherboard, yes, but how to make sur USB ports works fine then, and how to clean space and trackpad ?

Thank you so much for your time and help

Image below :

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Update (09/20/2017)

Thank you so much for your quick answers ! This wasn’t a full glass of juice but only few drops so I’ll try Dan solution first. I’ll keep you updated :-)

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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Get a bunch of cotton swabs (Q-Tips) and some distilled water.

First disconnect the battery, then use the cotton swabs with the distilled water wipe down the surfaces getting all of the sticky residue of the orange juice out. Do be careful here! You don’t want to flood the area with the water only dampen the area just enough to remove the juice.

The keyboard will be tricky! Frankly, I would just replace the upper case as you likely have juice on the underside of the logic board as well here. And you’ll likely need to replace the trackpad too. Sadly OJ is just very bad for electronics, between the sugars you have the acids both are very corrosive.

Here’s the IFIXIT guide you’ll need to follow and the needed part: MacBook Air 13" Early 2015 Upper Case Replacement

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Chances are, there is juice in more places than you see. It is probably all over the back side of the board. I prefer 91-99% Isopropyl and a soft toothbrush. Pull the board out if you can. Walgreen's has these sprayers that come filled with 91-99% isopropyl. Spray the board down and scrub. USE A SOFT TOOTHBRUSH.

This is not going to get under the chips but will clean up some of the juice. Unfortunately, the device may work initially but then die later on because of corrosion under the chips. The best way to get all the juice off the board and for long term reliability is to find a repair shop with a good ultrasonic cleaner using a good ultrasonic cleaning solution made for electronics.

If the device still does not work after a good ultrasonic cleaning, you have a board level issue and you should find a repair shop that specializes in microsoldering and board level work on MacBooks.

As Dan said, It would be best to replace the top cover as juice is going to be all in the keyboard and trackpad. A bad trackpad can keep the device from turning on as well.

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Nico will be eternally grateful.
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