Repairing macbook top cover

[aljohn]

I bought a used ,early 2008 macbook running snow leopard this week. The top cover,keyboard surround has a very small amount of damage at the front edge. I noticed that 90% of all this era of macs had the same, or worse, damage in this area. It was mentioned dismissively in the adverts on Ebay. Mine isn't that bad at all. I've just read on this forum that this sort of damage had been repaired (replaced) free by Apple shops. Now I'm in the UK and I assume that this only happened in the States, and only on fairly recent macs. But before passing by I thought I'd ask what is the current situation on repairs of this kind? I mean, mine is only 8 years old.......

 

[pigoo3]

I bought a used ,early 2008 macbook running snow leopard this week. The top cover,keyboard surround has a very small amount of damage at the front edge. I noticed that 90% of all this era of macs had the same, or worse, damage in this area. It was mentioned dismissively in the adverts on Ebay. Mine isn't that bad at all. I've just read on this forum that this sort of damage had been repaired (replaced) free by Apple shops. Now I'm in the UK and I assume that this only happened in the States, and only on fairly recent macs. But before passing by I thought I'd ask what is the current situation on repairs of this kind? I mean, mine is only 8 years old.......

You're talking about the MacBooks that were made out of polycarbonate (plastic)…rather than the Unibody Aluminum bodies all current Mac laptops are made of. Yes that cracking was pretty widespread in those models (2006 thru 2010). I believe that the MacBooks that were repaired…were repaired with the same material (not superior). So folks that had the repair would need to be very careful how they handled them after the repair…or the cracks would happen again. The cracks many times happen when too much pressure is applied to the palm rest areas. Such as when someone tries to handle their MacBook with one hand (thumb in the middle of the palm rest area)…resulting in too much pressure in a small area…and then crack!

I'm pretty sure this repair program ended at least a couple years ago…if not more.

- Nick