I’ve had this laptop for a couple years for grad school. Best I’ve ever had. Use it for crunching GIS work.
Unfortunately, it had an encounter with some truly delicious honey whiskey recently, which got inside the USB ports AND expansion bays on either side. I have now opened it up, let it dry, and am tearing it down piece by piece and cleaning. That might be a futile effort – it remains to be seen. Fortunately, I found that the RAM, hard drive or battery are still sober, so silver linings.
My suspicion is that the expansion bay connectors are done for, so I’d like to start by replacing those. Is it possible to buy only the expansion bays, or do I have to get the whole gd chassis? The chassis is $400 (Framework | Framework Laptop 13 Chassis)) and while I could get one used for cheaper, maybe, I don’t think I’ll need the whole thing. Is there somewhere I can just get the expansion bay part?
Here are the two parts (circled in blue) that I’m looking for:
Did you unplug your battery? I looked at your picture, but I’m not certain. If it’s not unplugged, I’d strongly recommend you do so. And keep it disconnected until you’re finished cleaning it.
I’m not familiar with honey whiskey. Is there an amount of actual honey or sugar in it, or is it just made from it?
The slots of the side expansion card slots? From whiskey getting in the latch mechanism?
Err, I think it will be ok, once cleaned well.
I more concerned about electrical parts, your motherboard, at least it looks like drops on the plastic cover near the battery, plus the stuff on the fan & that the expansion card is right next to the board. Does it seem like none got on the motherboard?
This is what you need to do. For everything that may have got liquid on it.
It must be at least 90% isopropyl alcohol. And if you can get it where you are without spending an unreasonable amount of money try to get higher.
I know alcohol was what you spilled, but that was probably 80-90 proof, 45% alcohol.
Do the circuit boards first. Then you can reuse the same alcohol for the chassis parts. Since clean, fresh alcohol isn’t important for the chassis. Remove every sticker from all parts. Alcohol melts a lot of regular sticker glues. You should do it with decent ventilation going through, since a large amount of isopropyl alcohol is going to have a good amount of fumes. You don’t want to breath that much, it’s not quite like drinking alcohol.
The battery does not go in alcohol. If any whiskey might have got in through where the wires enter or otherwise inside the wrapper I’d suggest disposing of the battery and buying a new one. A fire might not be a big risk, but the gasses produced are so toxic and nasty if it does happen that even a small risk is not worth taking.
Battery is unplugged and was removed after I took this photo. This was honey whiskey infused with bourbon whiskey, the one made by Jim Beam. Very good, VERY sweet. It has actual honey in it-
