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MacBook White Unibody Core 2 Duo A1342 Late 2009 This old Mac still works perfectly other than a keyboard that became completely unresponsive after an injudicious attempt to clean it with a barely wet sponge 3 or 4 years ago. Since then we’ve overcome this deficit with a wired keyboard. However, as the Mac still functions very well, I want to give it a new lease of life and replace the built-in keyboard. Yes, I know this is not an easy job as the keyboard is glued and plastic-welded into position and a backing plate that covers the underside of the keyboard is also glued -in place. There are no iFixit videos or guides for this job but I did come across two YouTube videos that show how it may be done. Video1 uses an exacto knife or scalpel to remove the backing plate and then places the new keyboard over what’s left of the 105 (or so) small plastic studs which acted as plastic rivets on the old keyboard. Surprisingly, no attempt is made to glue or plastic-weld the new keyboard. The backing plate is, however, glued in place with superglue plus activator. Even more surprising is that in Video2 each of the 105 (or so) small plastic studs that protrude through the keyboard are carefully removed with an exacto knife. No further attempts are made to secure the new keyboard in place other than the rigidity of the glued-in backing plate placed over it. Given that Apple seems to have used a combination of glue and 105 plastic rivets to ensure that the keyboard is held tightly in place, I find it hard to believe that a replacement keyboard requires nothing more than the overlaying backing plate to impart solidity to the keys of the keyboard. If anybody else has actually done this job on an A1342 Macbook, what has been your experience with securing the new keyboard in place. Thanks.

Update: I’ve gone ahead and replaced the keyboard and it worked out pretty well. The keyboard now works fine although the keys are just a little noisy when pressed. It seems that the scissor-mechanisms under the keys are not as rigid as in the original Apple keyboard and seem to “rattle” a little. Removing the black back-panel and the old keyboard were actually relatively easy and I got both off in less than 30 minutes. The key to removing the black back-panel was to take out the two screws in the panel located close to the audio and K-slot ports (these are the only screws in the panel). After that, I needed nothing more than a small flat-head screwdriver to “unglue” the panel starting from the unglued section where the screws were. The keyboard itself was even easier to remove and I needed no more than one hand to gently ease the keyboard off the palm-rest support. The plastic or rubber rivets which secured the keyboard to the palm-rest “popped”, and some partially broke, as the keyboard was slowly removed. I had intended to use the technique outlined in this video to reconstruct the securing plastic rivets out of what remained of the original rivets. However, at this stage I was surprised to find that the holes (about 100 of them) in the new keyboard did not, even remotely, match up with the positions of the remnants of the rivets. I was, therefore, left with no option but to remove all of the rivet remnants and rely only on the Laser Bond adhesive used in the video link to secure the keyboard to the palm-rest. Without the rivets as “guides” for the precise positioning of the keyboard (to make sure all keys were unimpeded by the palm-rest supports), this operation had to be handled very delicately and several attempts were required before getting it right. The black back-panel I glued to the casing using contact adhesive and this worked well. Then, after replacing all of the other components in the case, I booted the MacBook and everything worked fine including the keyboard. While the casing was open, I took the opportunity to replace the HDD with a SSD (Samsung EVO 850, 250GB), upgrade the RAM to 8GB as well as replacing the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU (CPU was running a little hot, but may have been more affected by about 60% of the fan outlet grid having been blocked by dust). All in all, I’m happy with the results as well as with what I learned doing the job. Thanks to everyone that contributed to the discussion.

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I got a water damaged a1342 sometime ago. The repair of the keyboard had been attempted before but was just half done, the keyboard support that was partly cracked away from the white plastic body had been glued back without much care and some keys would not respond properly and many were not protruding enough. I did unglue the whole thing and cleaned it roughly with a chisel and then worked more carefully with a smaller electrical milling tool to get an even surface and matching parts. The plastic keyboard support is quite stiff and sturdy and can keep the keyboard in place by itself without any problem if it’s properly glued back in place, I can confirm that. The outcome of my work might have not been perfect, but certainly satisfactory, and with patience and some work I’m pretty sure you’ll manage to do the same.

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