MacBook Pro 13" Retina (Late 2012-Early 2013) Trackpad

My Problem

My brother recently got a new MacBook Pro w/ Touchbar, and gifted me his old early 2013 Retina MBP! Unfortunately, the trackpad no longer worked and the screen wobbled quite a bit. Using an external mouse constantly isn't the best experience, and my old MBP had also had a busted trackpad, and I really missed the ease of the multitouch swipes and gestures.

My Fix

The repair was fairly straightforward, especially with the help of the guides here on iFixit. I first tackled the trackpad, with was the most intrusive repair. The guides wanted me to totally remove the battery, which wasn't feasible as those are glued in with an insanely effective adhesive. Instead, I only detached part of the battery (that wasn't glued in) and was able to deroute and reroute the trackpad cable with ease.

After that, I tackled the screen wobble. I thought maybe the screws that attached the display to the main chassis were loose, but that was not the case. Unfortunately that was where the iFixit guides ended, so I took to Google and found that if you slide the black plastic cover at the bottom of the display over, you can gain access to several more Torx Screws. Those were the loose ones, and a quick tightening of those resolved my wobble issue.

After that, I used the iFixit guides in reverse to seal everything up!

My Advice

The guides here on iFixit are great, but sometimes they aren't the best to blindly follow. I knew at the start of this repair that I was only going to replace the trackpad, and not the whole battery (for today. I may go back later and do that too!) Knowing that, I was comfortable skipping a large chunk of the trackpad repair guide to get where I needed to go.

In addition, the iFixit guides aren't all encompassing! I needed to venture out to the rest of the web to find the solution to my display wobble, but the guides did get me to a point where I was more than comfortable doing so by exonerating one set of screws, leaving the other as the only potential culprit.