4. When prying the bezel clips off the bezel (Step 40), shield the bezel clip with your hand. Sometimes the bezel clips can flick off without warning and if they're a bit loaded up they can travel across the workshop at speed (generally never to be seen again).

5. During reassembly, when replacing the screen (Step 35), prop the screen up with something (block of wood, nearby wall etc.) so that it is at right angles to the keyboard - it's much easier to fit.

6. Be meticulous about derouting and rerouting any wires and be careful not to pinch or snag anything - tracing a pinched wire after an unsuccessful repair can be a nightmare.

7. Sometimes the screen will still flicker and there'll be a high pitched buzzing on initial start up. This is a dry contact on the hinge clutch assembly. Wiggling it back and forth a few times generally solves this.

Doing this sort of repair is good value - not many shops repair these macs anymore.

Cheers!

Karl

These are a very comprehensive set of instructions and give a really good grand tour of the innards of a MacBook 8. They are also useful for replacing the hard drive or the optical drive.

Couple of hints:

1. Have on hand some canned compressed air - the inside of a laptop is generally quite full of dust and fluff.

2. Also have on hand some contact cleaner spray (do NOT use degreasers/lubricants/anti rust sprays such as RP 7 or WD 50). Contact cleaner sprays generally only contact isopropyl alchohol. It's good to give exposed contacts a bit of a clean - even grease from fingertips can affect conductivity and hence performance. (If possible, use powder free surgical gloves).

3. Make sure you have the right tools (don't skimp - buy the tools set from iFixit). Not using the right spudger on a plug could be the cause of irreparable damage to the circuit board.

(continued next posting)