while the original MacBook Air is
amazing and gorgeous and fits inside a
manila envelope it is not without fault
one of the issues we hear about most
frequently is that the display assembly
hinges wear out easily or they break
completely and unfortunately they're
integrated into the display assembly
making it terribly difficult to just
replace the hinges so if you're looking
to fix those hinges or your LCD is
broken the best thing to do is just
replace the entire display assembly hi
I'm MJ with iFixit and today I'm going
to show you how to replace the display
assembly in an original MacBook Air this
video is a great overview of the process
but of course you're going to want to
follow the step-by-step instructions and
the repair guide on our site when you
replace your display assembly I'm going
to get all my parts and tools together
so I can get started for this repair
you're going to need a spudger a
phillips double zero screwdriver a t6
Torx driver both of which i got from our
26 piece bit driver kit and of course
your replacement display assembly now
that we've got all that together I can
get started by removing the Phillips
screws that hold the lower case in place
and of course I would be absolutely lost
without my handy dandy screw tray these
screws are tiny and they roll away
really easily so I like to use the tray
to keep track of them and keep them
organized
with all of those screws out I can take
off the bottom case you're just going to
lift it from the rear of the computer
and rotate it towards the front and now
that we're inside you can see all of the
innards of the macbook air and obviously
it is almost entirely battery the
battery is held in place by just a few
screws and one cable so I'm going to go
ahead and take care of those now with
that last screw out the battery should
just lift right out getting me access to
all the cables that are holding a
harddrive in place so I'll go ahead and
disconnect those
there are four screws holding the
harddrive in place and one of them is
covered up by this microphone cable so
I'm going to have to deer out it before
I can get access to that screw you want
to be gentle with it though because the
fragile cable you don't want to go
ripping it off and once it's D routed
I'm going to go ahead and remove the
four screws that are holding the
harddrive in place
with that screw out the hard drive
should come right out and we can move on
to the heatsink and the fan which is
held in place by a few more Phillips
screws there's one screw hidden
underneath this little cosmetic cover so
you're just going to want to use your
tip of your spudger to kind of push that
aside to get access to that screw
with all those screws out I can
disconnect this cable and the fan and
heatsink should come out as one big unit
and that gives us access to all the
cables that are connected to the logic
board this includes the microphone cable
the airport and Bluetooth cable track
head cable data display cable DC and
cable and the audio cable all of which I
will disconnect now
the airport and Bluetooth cable and
trackpad cable are secured by a small
metal bracket so I'm going to go ahead
and remove the two Phillips screws that
are holding it in place and then I can
disconnect those cables
but all of those cables disconnected
there just a few more screws holding the
logic board in place
with the logic board out there's only
one more thing left for us to do before
we get to the display assembly and that
is take care of this Airport and
Bluetooth bracket once the brackets off
you're going to disconnect the cables
underneath and then use your spudger to
deer out the antenna cable because
that's going to come off with the
display assembly
okay now remember that screw tray I
mentioned earlier this is where it comes
in handy because there are 17 screws
securing these two pieces together so
I'm going to get to work removing them
but I'm going to leave to the Torx
screws in place until I'm ready to fully
remove the display assembly
with 15 of the 17 screws removed we can
put the computer up on its side and open
it up and what you're going to do is
securely hold these two pieces in place
while you remove those final two Torx
screws you don't want the pieces
flopping over as you're moving the
screws
with those last two screws out you can
slowly start to separate these two
pieces but you don't want to pull too
hard because the cables are fragile and
you want to treat them carefully and
that's it we're all done now I know
there were a lot of screws involved but
you saw me do the whole thing it's not a
very difficult repair of course you can
find all of the parts and tools for this
and many other repairs at ifixit.com and
if you run into any problems during your
repairs there are lots of solutions and
the MacBook Air repair guide on our site
for all the latest tear downs and repair
videos be sure to subscribe to our
YouTube channel and follow us on twitter
at twitter.com/randymckown thanks