Fun refurb and attempt at a black unibody MacBook7,1

[CooperBox]

I just love the MacBook7,1 produced between May 2010 and July 2011, which with the 2.4GHz 'Penryn' processor was the last of the Core2Duo polycarbonite unibody MacBooks - and imho the best!
As a discerning AppleMac collector, this model attracted my attention due to it's faster processor and superior graphics chipset compared to earlier models, and especially ease of maintenance, making any component changes or upgrades (memory and/or hard drive) relatively straight-forward - and in this respect much newer models of Macbooks pale in comparison.
All these positive attributes particularly lured me to the MacBook7,1 model, and I managed to obtain 3 over a period of 2 years and completely disassembled, refurbished and upgraded them. Gave one to a family member, kept one pristine example externally as original as posible, and with the 3rd as it was not in the best of condition, decided on a face-lift, thinking that a black Unibody MacBook would be cool by anyones standards. Having it black sounded easy but in reality was much more difficult to achieve. But bare with me......

It should be said that the unibody Macbooks were not without their faults. Although cleverly marketed as durable polycarbonite material and often likened to bullet-proof vests and similar body armour, in the real world many of these Macs are found with cracks around the top cover rear hinges, close to the trackpad, adjacent to the left hand side accessory ports etc. Another unpleasant fault was the tendency for the soft rubber bottom on the baseplate cover to detach from the aluminium plate, and this problem was recognised - with Apple offering a bottom case replacement program within two years of new purchase.

In my experience the 2.4GHz 7,1 model is not the easisest to find, and even more difficult to locate without the above described faults. If you should find one and the price suits your budget, dont hesitate - get one! Unknown to many they can be upgraded with 16Gb memory and run Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra. They can also easily be tweaked to run Mojave and Catalina.
The following photos were from the 3rd Macbook I found. It was fairly cheap as the white polycarbonite body displayed a number of unpleasant cracks. There were none fortunately on or adjacent to the top cover rear hinges, had there been I would have probably passed on the purchase!

Like all well-used laptops, the first look inside makes one cringe at the accumulation of dirt, dust and misc debris, I'll save you from the worst shots and just show a few:
(i) Left: Keyboard was in reasonable shape but the shift key had become detached. (ii) Right: Logic board after removal.



iii) Below: Closer view of logic board. The fan (not shown) was heavily clogged with dust, as was the heat sink exchanger (top right) most of the debris I removed just prior to this photo.



iv) Logic board lightly cleaned, heat-sink removed. (v) Further clean of logic board & heat-sink.


vi) Heat-sink and attachment details. (vii) Detail of the Core2Duo 2.4GHz processor.


viii) Bottom case with screen removed. Areas which showed light cracking through the case were re-inforced using epoxy resin and lightly dressed out. (ix) Logic board/heat-sink assy prepared for re-installation.


X) Logic board, fan and optical drive re-installed.


Before refitting all components I made several attempts at cutting strips of black carbon-look adhesive vinyl to the front, rear and sides of the bottom cover. Also similar sheets of black vinyl to the topcase and keyboard surround. The results unfortunately were not as I'd hoped for. Cutting around the keyboard surround power button and accessory ports was tricky, and also around the Apple logo & leaf on the top cover. Whilst many may have been satisfied and lived with the results, they were not as professional as I would have liked, and although only a small detail I wasn't happy that the etched icons of the usb/ethernet and other small accessory ports were masked by the black carbon vinyl. So I removed it all and tried a change of direction. Would an application of matt black 'Plasti-Dip' give better results?
An hour of careful masking and several coats of 'Plasti-Dip' later, it looked ok on the top cover, but didn't look right on the keyboard surround and sides of bottom casing.
So I finally ended up with a partially-black unibody MacBook, which I guess is fairly unique and aestetically I'm reasonably happy with, but reckon could do better if I ever attempt a similar modification.
What I particularly like on this MacBook is the performance. I changed out the original HD for a Samsung SSD, and installed Mojave with the assistance of Dosdude's patcher. Thought I was pushing my luck attempting this with just 4GB of memory, but surprise, surprise it runs far better than I ever expected. In fact it's now in use for this post and has edited and attached the photos never missing a beat. I was going to upgrade to 8GB of RAM (16 would be overkill for my use) but with no heavy video editing planned I'll stick with the current 4GB.
The other very worthwhile changes were to install the latest Waterfox web browser, tweaked with FoxPEP and in use with DuckDuckGo for added security and privacy. Configured in this way, for internet use it's very rapid and a joy to use. All this for less than 100euros......

A few additional details to follow as I've reached my photo limit here..........
[automerge]1588268179[/automerge]
Samsung SSD etc