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My wife spilled her coffee on the top/rear end of the keyboard on a MacBook Air A1466. I am wondering which disassembly guide will allow me to get in there and clean up.
It was black coffee so no sugar or milk in play. I have isopropyl alcohol and compressed air, but open to any other hints or tips you might have for cleaning up.
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We don’t have any guides for what is needed for a liquid spill within a MacBook Air. We do have MacBook Air 13" Early 2017 lots of guides!! to repair your system, you’ll need to work out which parts will need to be removed to get to the spillage. This is a generic guide for MacBook systems it should help in your search and destroy mission! MacBook water damage diagnostic
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Let me ask another way - which guide will take me to removing the keyboard mechanism from the upper shell? I believe the whole keyboard will have to come out to clean around the function keys and first row of letter keys.
I was not expecting a guide to cleaning a liquid spill, just which guide takes me through disassembling the keyboard where the spill landed.
Looking at the Upper Case disassembly sequence it appears that the keyboard is attached to the upper case and separated from the rest of the interior by a plastic sheet. That sheet does not necessarily appear water tight, so its possible that liquid ran into the interior and landed on the logic board below.
I can remove the logic board, inspect it and clean if needed. But it appears there is no guide for accessing the keyboard?
@lavardera - Review this great vid MacBook Air Keyboard Replacement
Ah - perfect resource, thank you Dan.
@danj Success! After reading that scary water spill article I decided to just go in and have a look. I disassembled and found a very small area at the rear edge of the main board that showed some residue from the coffee, and no corrosion. I proceeded to take it apart so I could inspect the top of the main board and I found no signs of wetting there. I cleaned the board with alcohol and a lintless cloth, vacuumed up all the dust and fibers from the whole interior, and put it all back together. It booted up without a sign of trouble.
I used the Upper Case instructions and as usual the documentation and guidance was outstanding. Only thing I noticed was all the pentalobe screws noted as P5 were P4 on our machine. Also while a T8 security was noted as needed, the screws were regular T8s and the text in the instructions did not mention T8 security, just T8.
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