[Ti] Hinge Repair advice

[Dennis Fazio]

On Jul 10, 2007, at Tue, Jul 10 2007, 8:16 am, FWPHOTO wrote:

> I'm going to attempt a hinge repair (left side only) on my 800MHz  
> Titanium using the Glide Kit from RADTECH & then, . . .
>
> What?
>
> For those who have repaired the hinges themselves, what did you do  
> to stick the broken pieces back together? Epoxy? Specifically what  
> kind? Your technique? Problems you encountered along the way?

The Glide Kits only contain tools to loosen and lubricate a stiff  
hinge, not to repair anything. If your hinge is just stiff and hard  
to swing, this will do it and you will need no further repair.

If the hinge has any cracks and is still mostly intact, you might get  
away with loosening and lubricating with the RADTECH kit if you will  
open/close it infrequently. If it's broken it will need replacement  
and I recommend you send it out for repair to MacService. The hinge  
assembly is about $80 from PBParts and the full repair with parts and  
warranty is $200. If you're really handy and have the time, you could  
do it yourself. I don't think it's worth the time and risk of damage  
though.

I did try to repair mine (it was cracked and very stiff so that the  
LCD case was splitting apart.  I did manage to loosen it a little  
(without the RADTECH tool) but in the process of bending it back and  
forth actually snapped the axel pin so that now the lid only works  
with one hinge holding the lid. The broken one just holds the display  
panel in place (which is just fine, actually). I did use Gorilla glue  
to put everything back together on the broken hinge, reinforcing the  
LCD halves with a small piece of metal glued to the edge on the  
corner. Since the hinge carries no stress, it does the job just fine.  
In the process, though, I damaged the display a bit so that the  
bottom 1/4" is just solid lines. The rest works OK and its still  
usable; I just have to put the Dock at the side.

There are small fragile cables involved so it's not hard to kill the  
whole display. That would be expensive.

-- 
Dennis Fazio