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Obtaining Replacement Parts for Your Laptop?
halosfan asks: "I recently broke the LCD bezel (the plastic thing that holds the LCD and related wires together) on a laptop that I bought half a year ago. I checked eBay as well as a few online stores specializing in laptop replacement parts, but still couldn't find the replacement. I contacted the manufacturer, but they were absolutely useless. Local laptop repair shop said they wouldn't replace the bezel without replacing the LCD, which isn't acceptable. It is an extremely frustrating situation, as the bezel is a minor part that I otherwise couldn't care less about, but it is necessary to carry the laptop around. I am wondering what other ways are there to obtain a laptop replacement part? Also, any recommendations for manufacturers that are good about making obscure replacement parts for their laptops available to the general public?" Does your laptop manufacturer make it easy or hard to get the necessary replacement parts?
My side hobby is auto-repair and restoration. Together, my father and I have restored several vehicles (1970 Pontiac GTO Judge, 1969 Triumph Bonneville T120R, 1968 Chevrolet Corvair convertible, and a 1982 Volvo GL to Mustang 5.0 conversion, if anyone here cares,) and one of the best things we did was to scavenge junkyards for 95%-complete vehicles that were just rusting away. If we got one with a good body, but a blown engine, then that would be our project car, and we would just scavence a rustbucket that was still good under the hood and swap out the drivetrain.
When I took a job in the IT field and began repairing computers, I applied this same logic. If I had a laptop with a cracked case, but the internals were still fine, then I would try and scavenge a laptop with a dead motherboard that still had a good case and was discarded because it just didn't work. You can easily swap out things like that. I've done it on several Dell Inspirons and IBM ThinkPads, you can have a couple "parts" machines going at once and just get replacements from those. Sometimes on eBay you get lucky and find an auction for something like "Pallet of 100 Broken ThinkPads" for $50 and you can get some serious finds. If you want to take a bit of a risk you can even try "dumpster diving" outside of office buildings, schools and libraries. Often times when something breaks or is very obsolete these places will just toss it out. My favorite find so far was an IBM ThinkPad 486, complete, with two working batteries and all the cables in a case, that was just sitting in a dumpster because it was too old to run modern software.
Find out who the case manufacturer is - most cases are made by Taiwanese manufacturers, even brand names. One of the biggest is HyperData Direct - check their web site to see if they carry a generic case part for your laptop.
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It's becoming more common these days for 'custom' parts like these to be bundled.
I recently broke a wiring harness on my girlfriend's Pontiac Aztec. I could replace it in about five minutes if I could get Pontiac to sell me the part. But they won't, not without purchasing the entire headlight module, for 300 dollars.
Your best bet is to do what I'm doing for that part - namely, hitting junkyards(in your case, eBay). Another possibility is to find a user's group/forum for these laptops - I know when I had a Sparcbook, there was always a guy or two with broken ones who would send you some weird random part.
There's a site called PB Parts that has Apple laptop parts. I replaced my iBook HD there and my brother replaced his PowerBook keyboard with a part from there. Some of their prices are a little high, but still cheaper than getting it repaired by Apple or a reseller if you don't have a warranty.
I work at my college servicing the IBM ThinkPads that the school leases. (There's your background
The manufacturer should have replacement parts as long as the thing is under warranty and possibly a while after.
I've probably replaced about 4,000 LCD bezels by now and I know exactly what you mean.
The place that was trying to replace the ENTIRE assembly on you was doing nothing more than trying to rip you off BIG TIME. LCDs can cost more than the laptop their in, and that piece of plastic probably costs $.50 to make. (Even though IBM charges ~$50 for one)
I recommend just trying harder to contact the original manufacturer.
Question everything
I have purchased replacement batteries and a replacement keyboard for my aging Dell Inspiron 3700 from laptopsforless.com. I wasn't terribly impressed with the lifetime of the batteries - they wore out in just over a year, whereas the original Dells had lasted 18 months before dying (I can be hard on batteries). The keyboard was a refurb, but has performed adequately.
You could always buy a sacrificial laptop on eBay and use it for parts. If it's old enough, it won't cost you too much.
Extended warranty could be worthless too.
Toshiba laptop with broken hinge and extended warranty...
$75 for the hinge,
$56 for four screws.
Extended warranty invalid as the broken hinge was due to "misuse"
BP
I had snapped off the metal hinge that attaches the LCD panel to the base. (And my laptop is out of warantee) I looked up part numbers in dells online manuals, called a Dell representative, and $40 later, they sent me the part, no fuss whatsoever.
I was actually really surprised that the process went so smoothly.
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Agreed. I've got a Toshiba 105CS (P5 at 75 MHz) still kicking since 1990-something. I've used the Hell out of it and, through no particular abuse of mine, eventually cracked out all around both hinges.
Ebay is not the answer, extended warranty is no the answer.
The answer is JB-Weld (www.jbweld.net) or a similar epoxy. It's the modern nerd answer to tape on your glasses. My old Toshi ain't much to look at, but it still works.
IBM is just great with Thinkpads. The service manual for all Thinkpad models is available online as a PDF file. It has incredibly detailed instructions for assembling the laptop from several hundred FRUs. You can order the FRUs from IBM or cheaper from a number of resellers. They seem to keep good stock on parts for older models.
A few years ago a friend of mine dropped her T20 Thinkpad onto asphalt from about 4 feet. It made quite a mess. I thought that it was going to be a total write-off, but I found the IBM info, ordered about $150 of little broken bits and restored the thing to perfect working order in about a week. It was great.
I've been a devoted Thinkpad fan ever since. I bought a new keyboard for my T23 recently, it took about 5 minutes to order the right part and another 5 minutes to install it. IBM really does do service manuals and parts the way you think a big company should do it.
jeff
I needed a "new" notebook, so I bought an eBay'd Compaq Armada M300 - under 3 pounds, under $400. Great stuff, runs any operating system like charm, has 2-hourish battery life. It has a slow proc and only 800x600 graphics, but it is cheap, disposable, light, etc.
Then I dropped it, and it landed on the inserted wireless card. The machine seemed fine, but the PCMCIA guts inside got sheared off the daughterboard. Compaq's durability was not at fault, IMO, just my stooopidity.
I went to the HP partsfinder, and _every_ little piece was available, most of them at good prices. The daughtercard was $35, and the instructions to replace it were online. Strangely, the only expensive things were the commodity parts - memory, cpu, hard drive, etc. And the LCD, of course - they always are.
However, not satisified with that, I went to ebay and searched for the part number - and got a new daughercard for $15.
Moral: stick to models that the big corps are buying, if possible. Their IT shops don't suffer the higher prices and foolishness that consumers buying consumer models do. Corollary: see if there's a corporate version of your consumer notebook, and then look for parts again - Compaq/HP use the same guts in their presarios as they do in their corporate line, for example.
Jonathan
IBM wanted $450 for the DVD. I bought a wrong model on Ebay(my bad, but IBM's whole FRU thing will drive you crazy until you figure it out). Then I bought another that's showing a corrupt firmware(AS-IS, damnit).
I've wasted hundreds of $ and time and I still have a otherwise nice Laptop with no DVD/CD player. I finally gave up and went out and bought a new one 2 months ago.
There are two alternative strategies.
1) plastic welding is a viable repair - you will find that if you contact your local panel banger (autobody repair shop) that they will be able to offer advise how to proceed.
The laptops are injection moulded plastics - possibly a TPE same as is used in the auto industy so the same techniques may apply.
2) glue it yourself. Call up your local 3M representative and ask them what structural glues they have for the plastic your lap top is made of. One product that MIGHT work is DP8005.
Another option is to contact polyurathane supply company. Those people have a nice website with good technical information.
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The type of equipment you need to plastic weld is generally an injection hot melt gun - they typically sell for about $5000 bux and are not too difficult to learn how to use. These guns force plastic under pressure into the crack and form a seam that is over 80% as strong as the original. The plastic comes in rods and is available in ABS, TPE, TFE,
You may want to check your Yellow Pages - look under PLASTIC WELDING equipment - call a supplier of the equipment and ask for a referal to who has the gun. Try to get to know the guy a bit and pay him well - broken plastic parts are a fact of life and these guys can do magic!!!
I used to work in a motorcycles-only body shop. We'd do custom jobs to harley's and bullet bikes. The work on the bullet-bikes ('crotch-rockets' as they are sometimes known) largely involved prepping the fairings and repairing small cracks.
Since fairings are made out of PVC, it was a simple matter to repair cracks in them with a soldering iron and a strip of raw pvc (or some old bits of fairing laying around). The welds would come out as strong or stronger than the original PVC. The only side effect would be an awful scarring effect, which we would then sand out, fill with bondo and apply primer. Good as new.
Your laptop bezel is made out of PVC or a similar polymer. It would probably be a simple matter to weld the crack back together, or whatever (hinges, clips &etc).
The most important part of this technique, however, is to work in a place with good ventilation and *WEAR A GODDAM FACE MASK*. The fumes and smoke of the process are toxic, carcinogenic and easilly filtered by a cheap paper mask over you mouth and nose. You know, like Michael Jackson would wear on the streets of Hong Kong. Eye protection is a good idea, too. This is why I still have lungs and vision.
I would always do the plastic welding in the paint booth, with the painter's mask and the fans on high. Since you'd only need to do a small amount, the face mask and a kitchen or bathroom fan would probably suffice.
And remember: this is slashdot. think before you take any advice.
Dell CompleteCare. Covers accidents, and well just about everything. Perhaps it's just my local rep, but he said we could basically toss the laptop out the window and get a replacement, as long as we said it wasn't 'intentional'.