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Repair guides and disassembly information for the 14-inch MacBook Pro released in October of 2021, featuring Apple-designed M1 Pro and M1 Max SoCs. Model A2442.

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Spacebar fell off, then 2h later spilled icetea on MacBook

I bought my macbook pro 14 2021 a few weeks ago.
Yesterday I noticed my spacebar feeling mushy, I pressed it a bit harder a few times and it worked again.
Then later it became lose, so I thought I just have to press it back in, went in fine but made cracking noises since then. So I just kept working with it.
Then the left side of the keycap just fell off. I pushed it back inside, not thinking much of it.
A bit later that day I had an accident then, I put a little icetea bottle infront of the mac and apparently the bottle was uneven at the bottom, as it just fell over (got it from pizza delivery), so it fell right onto my macbook.
Most of the liquid ran down to the table as I always keep the macbook on a laptop stand at around 20° angle.

I quickly wiped it with tissues, then turned it around and started shaking it to force any liquid out the air exaust (may not be so smart, I know, as the liquid may have flown up towards the display now)
I opened it up, after no liquid was coming out anymore. There was a bit of fluid on the fan that is below the jkl buttons (which were sticky as well until I cleaned them)
I slowly cleaned everything with a microfibre cloth that was slightly soaked in isopropanol until I didn't see anything left.

Laptop seems to work, I started some games from steam to make the chassis heat up a bit and force it to dry any residue, but then I noticed 2 pieces of transparent plastic below the spacebar, lifted it up slightly and apparently the pins that hold the lower metal wire on the left side fell off which explains why the button felt so weird, as probably one of them was stuck in the membrane.

I carefully held my vacuum cleaner next to it on lowest setting to remove those bits, but the spacebar keeps "unhinging" since those 2 pieces are missing.

I already talked to Amazon and Apple, both would "try to repair it", but I am scared that they might just break it or soak it with alcohol so that it breaks later.

Would you guys recommend me to send it back to repairs or open it up and clean it further?

It seems to run fine but I don't want it to develop any corrosion.

Also I saw that some of the components are under some kind of metal cooling-sheet that is soldered onto the logic board now, so no idea if I could see any residue there.

Update (12/23/2022)

Note: I type very gently, not one of those 'push the button through to the table' type of guys. Maybe the way I press the spacebar puts much stress on that corner, as I am used to press right on the left edge of the spacebar, because I switch between Command and Spacebar a lot when programming

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Ouch! That is quite a mess!

This will be an expensive repair If it’s repairable. These newer MacBook systems have fewer parts. Your best bet is to do the repair your self! Here’s the Apple self repair site Self Service Repair you’ll need a new upper case assembly at least.

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hm, as far as I can tell, I only need a new keycap, as the rest is intact.

I just realized that the red indicators inside which I thought did not have any liquid on them were not even supposed to be red but white, so here goes that lol.

Apple is willing to "try to repair it for free" still, but I am scared they might just send me back a dead laptop as I already experienced apple's repairskills on my 2013 macbook air, where I gave them a macbook with broken powerbutton and broken w,d,s keys and got a completelly dead one in return (they soaked it in alcohol and just killed the membranes, at least after 2 weeks of me going to the apple store every day, some manager approached me and figured their service was unfair and I got a free repair lol)

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Is it safe to try run some heavy compiler or renderer on it just to make the macbook heat up to dry it, or do you think this could accelerate corrosion now?

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Apple wants you in the store to convince you buy a replacement system. If the moisture sensors are red then they won’t fix the system and you are still on the hook for a new uppercase.

Given the spill it will be sticky even if you replaced the space bar piece. So far these are not available on there own yet.

Ah! Heat will fix it! Sorry no, take a drop of coffee or tea which has spilled onto the counter, sure the water evaporates… but that’s not the killer! It’s what remains! The sugars and acids. Besides we don’t want power running in the system as electrolysis will take place where the wetness straddles across which is another issue besides corrosion! So power your system down for now until you can get it serviced or fix it your self.

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Had it running while it was open and observed the logicboard with a thermal camera, there seems to be one spot next to the cpu/gpu heatspreader which is under a piece of plastic/silicone cover that. I spilled a tiny bit of isopropyl under that and quickly dried that thing off, no temperature building anymore 💪🏼

Also for some reason after typing all that previously, the spacebar seems to have found the perfect lockin place, as long as I don't use the right side of it (which I never do), it works better than before actually lol..

Amazon said they can still replace it as the spacebar issue has obviously nothing to do with the liquid spill and they would have to destroy that laptop anyway.

German laws are funny.

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@W _ I guess it can’t hurt.

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