Can I restore this DESTROYED MacBook Pro?

I've bought a lot of really dumb things for this channel but I think this might be the dumbest [Music] this video is sponsored by Hawthorne a premium tailored cologne brand take a quick quiz and they'll tailor two fragrances specifically to your interests stay tuned until later in the video and I have an exclusive offer for you guys this is or maybe was a 2017 13-inch MacBook Pro and I have to say I think this could be one of the most thoroughly destroyed Mac books I've ever taken a look at we've done some repair videos here on the channel but I don't think anything that I've looked at has come anywhere near this amount of destruction the touch bar itself is cracked the display is annihilated and the entire chassis is bent and angles that I didn't think we're possible there's massive dents in the sides the display and the topcase are somehow bent at different angles the thing is so thoroughly destroyed that you can even see small shards of aluminum that are wrapped around the case screws where the bottom cover was torn from the machine so you may be wondering why I bought a thoroughly demolished MacBook such as this and well the reason is simple it works or at least that's what the seller told me we're gonna see if this machine actually powers up now the display is destroyed but fortunately I've got this USB C external monitor I've used this a couple times I'll link it down in the description below if this is something you might find useful and now we're gonna actually see if this thing will boot so the back light is on well it does in fact appear that somehow this thing actually boots now I don't hear the fans let's just check on the underside here oh okay yeah I don't know if you can hear this but that fan is stuck so I think these fans might be toast so given that the logic board appears to be working we should be able to replace all of the bent and broken components and actually restore this computer so I bought a display assembly and I bought a bottom case this doesn't even have and I also bought a top case assembly so these are all of the major components aside from the logic board obviously and we should actually be able to repair it and I did also notice that even though these fans are absolutely destroyed the top case that I bought does have fans on it so this is probably gonna be one of the most stressful repairs I've ever done so without any further ado let's begin [Music] I start by carefully extracting the logic board as I work around the board disconnecting and unscrewing it I'm very careful not to flex or damage the board and you can see as it bends back into place despite being screwed into this warped frame fortunately I'm able to remove it safely from the top case and somehow the board isn't permanently bent from its time in there the next step is to harvest the touch ID button from the top case because it's tied to the logic board on these machines so I'll need to use it in the new frame I also decide to harvest the trackpad because there's nothing wrong with it it works perfectly fine it's held in place with ten screws and it comes out without much difficulty while I'm in there I noticed that the plastic clips that hold the bottom case on have been ripped off and are stuck in the top case next it's on to the display assembly which is completely trashed despite this I need to save the antenna assembly and all the screws that hold it together to use in the renovated computer the antenna is held on with 12 teeny teeny tiny p two pentalobe screws that are an absolute pain to get off but once they're gone it's time to remove the display assembly from the busted top case [Music] well at this point the trashed book pro is as disassembled as it needs to be I've got it all laid out in front of me and honestly I still can't get over the shape of this top case I'm amazed that it didn't completely Bend and mangle the logic board because this is just not a good shape I've also pulled out the good stuff like the trackpad and the touch ID button from the mangled casing so it very least will be able to salvage those pieces I want to save as much as humanly possible so the next plan is to reassemble the working components and make a fully functioning MacBook but man at this point am I tired if you ever work on stuff like this especially stressful non-standard disassemblies you can get pretty flustered if only I had some premium tailored cologne of some sort to keep me smelling fresh during this whole process oh wait a minute do you also get all gross when repairing mac books that have been run over by a bus hi I'm fancy Luke and I'm here to tell you about today's video sponsor Hawthorne a premium tailored cologne brand all you have to do is take their quiz which will ask you simple questions about your hygiene and lifestyle including how often you shower your skin type and even your favorite drink they offer free shipping with their orders and if you're not happy with your sense they'll retailer them based on your feedback mine smells like freshly cut logs and today I've got an extra fancy discount code for you fancy folks if you use code Luke 10 at checkout you can get 10% off your first order and now that I'm feeling fresh let's hop back into the repair [Music] and now it's time to start reassembly I'll start by attaching the new display to the new top case with the screws in antennae I salvaged from the trashed one [Music] then it's time to painstakingly reinsert the logic board and plug in all of the connectors [Music] ah we have a problem so as you can see the machine is booting yay good right I mean yes it is good that it works which means that I didn't destroy it and it wasn't already destroyed so that's a good thing however the touch part does not work on this top case and you can tell that because well for one it's blank and is not on so that's your first clue but then again you're probably thinking Oh Luke I'm sure you did something wrong because you're just an idiot yeah okay you're right I am an idiot but not this time because I opened up the Machine and I looked at the touch bar connector and the thing is shot it's very clearly damaged and there's really no way for me to replace just the touch bar because well look at I fix it it's a mess and I'm not doing that so I said you know what fine I'm returning this the seller accepted that they sold me a bad top case I'm gonna return it and replace it with this which is a brand new not a used to top case like this one was so this I can look at the connector and say okay good the touch bar that's good it's gonna work I did have to swap in I bought some more fans for 20 bucks and used the fan screws from the old broken top case I also stole the Thunderbolt 3 ports from the old top case and this one you can see it's brand-new look at this it's got like this little plastic cover over the battery so that's pretty cool this should be a brand new top case with a brand new battery so that's kind of neat so yeah we're gonna have to literally do this entire repair again I'm gonna have to fully disassemble this computer and reassemble it into here so that is a real pain and I'm not pleased with the seller from whom I bought this top case because that is really poor work on their part but nonetheless let the repair commence [Music] [Music] it is kind of hard to believe that this is the same MacBook as the mangled wreck that I showed you at the beginning of this video but nevertheless here it is now I suppose in fairness saying the same MacBook is a bit of a misnomer because the while everything that you touch has been replaced screen top case ok I actually no no the touch ID you touch that and that is the original MacBook but everything else has been replaced and the MacBook that it is is actually kind of interesting because obviously you've seen that this is a 20-17 touch bar MacBook Pro but I haven't told you the full specs so this is the 3.3 gigahertz dual-core i-5 and it's upgraded with the 16 gigabytes of RAM and a 500 gigabyte hard drive so it actually is decently upgraded and you're probably wondering at this point how much this whole process cost well the goal of this particular video was restoration it wasn't really to show you guys any cool trick that you can try I've done that a couple times in the past and obviously that's not really the case here because it's gonna be kind of hard to find a similar situation as someone who apparently just ran over their MacBook with a car so it's not exactly a situation that you might be able to replicate but all told it ended up costing about eight hundred and twenty dollars to build this computer not bad the most nerve-wracking part was definitely the initial disassembly because we were at a point where the computer was working but with a board that was flexed that bad there's really no telling what could happen honestly the angle at which the board was bent was probably the most that you could get without causing serious damage because you got to remember that along pretty much the whole width of the device runs the heatsink in the heat pipe which is a lot more rigid than the logic board itself so what can happen is if it's really really bent that would basically just press down and possibly cracked the CPU die so it could have been a lot worse and unbending a board that's been bent like that could end up damaging it but fortunately that didn't happen here I would say if you do want to take on a serious repair where you have an absolutely mangled MacBook definitely make sure that it powers on that it boots up and try to confirm as many functions as you can now that was not something that I did here and it was a little bit risky because MacBooks like this there's a lot of things that are connected to it there's a ton of connections on the inside that could get damaged there was a very real possibility that something like the display connector or the thunderbolt ports had been ripped off and damaged a connector on the board and that is not really something that I would be able to repair because once a component on the board is damaged I can't really replace that without replacing the board fortunately that wasn't the case here and you also have to keep in mind a lot of people with a repair such as this might say well what was the point of buying the destroyed MacBook if you replaced all of the outside components you could have just bought a logic board and put it in and just bought the parts individually so why bother with the broken MacBook anyway well as you guys saw there were a lot of parts that came from the broken MacBook besides just the functional logic board the antenna the touch ID button all of the Thunderbolt ports the screws literally every single screw that holds this thing together came from that computer and you wouldn't get those components if you were just buying the logic board so overall this was definitely a fun and satisfying project I always like seeing a poor beaten down MacBook restored to its former glory and honestly I was surprised at how well this went aside from the whole top case snafu that required me to completely disassemble and reassemble the entire computer again that was annoying but apart from that it was a lot of fun so I hope you guys enjoyed this video let me know what you think of this project in the comments section below and as usual don't forget to follow me on twitter at luke me on e and check out my subreddit in the description below i'll also link down there the tool kit that i use to do this entire disassembly it's the iFixit tool kit fantastic kit so that's linked down below and with that I'll see you all in the next vid [Music] [Music]

Channel: Luke Miani

Views: 629,316

Keywords: repair, macbook repair, destroyed macbook, apple macbook, macbook pro, apple laptop, 2017 macbook pro, Touch Bar MacBook Pro repair, how to replace MacBook Pro top case, how to replace MacBook Pro display, 2017 MacBook Pro repair, ifixit, right to repair, #righttorepair, techrax, Hugh jeffreys, destroyed MacBook pro, 2017 MacBook Pro 13, MacBook Pro repair tutorial, MacBook Pro top case replacement, repairing

Id: 3ntdQuiA5tk

Length: 16min 32sec (992 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/doc_brietz]

I did a tear down and rebuild similar to this with both a 2010 MBA 13” and a 2013 MBP 15”. I say at least an hour and a half. Knowing what he had to do, spending well over 2 and a half to 3 hours, I would have hated life. Kinda like swaping our a processor in a 2011 iMac 27” then forgetting to plug in a hard drive and connect the turn on button. You only make those painful mistakes once.

[u/Bookshelf82]

I wonder how long it took him. It would be nice if a timer was displayed on screen.

[u/mlv24719]

I wonder how much he paid for just the destroyed MacBook itself, since all he told us was it was $820 with the replacement parts factored in 🤔

[u/cam2go]

Where do you buy the parts? Asking as my sister left me a 2017 13 in MBP with TB that has a cracked screen I need to replace.