A friend brought over their friend's early 2015 MBA. Had water spill 7 months ago and just left it sitting in the box. Follow were the debug and repair steps taken.
MBA now runs only on charger and not battery power. Appears to have SMC issues randomly (fast fan, do not recognize the battery). Pulled the battery and IO board (after some cleaning, see below) and tested them against known good MBA and proved they were good. So logic board is the only remaining culprit
Found the motherboard (820-00165-A) schematic + boardview available here.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpost.php?p=707034&postcount=2
Opened it up and discovered a lot of small corrosion. Mostly on the side facing bottom case cover as gravity would have drained all the water down here and sat there until it slowly evaporated.
- components on the main logic board near the wireless board (on the antenna side)
- IO board magsafe connector solder area
- Any tall component tightly packed together have alleys that trap moisture and high corrosion
Even follow Louis Rossmann's video to look at a resistors in front of the pair of diode that supplies power from battery + AC adapter. Battery side (R7006) looked like it was a little cooked. This is a great tutorial if you have an A1466 with these symptoms and some basic electronics knowledge.
I was sure R7006 needed to be replaced but thought I first scrubbed down all these corroded areas with IPA and near both board side of SMC in particular given the symptoms. The MBA became fully functional afterwards (also tested all the keys). Lucky us.
An ultrasonic cleaner would do even better job but don't have one. We'll probably leave it running perfectly for now and go ultrasonic cleaning path if further problems in the future.
MBA now runs only on charger and not battery power. Appears to have SMC issues randomly (fast fan, do not recognize the battery). Pulled the battery and IO board (after some cleaning, see below) and tested them against known good MBA and proved they were good. So logic board is the only remaining culprit
Found the motherboard (820-00165-A) schematic + boardview available here.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpost.php?p=707034&postcount=2
Opened it up and discovered a lot of small corrosion. Mostly on the side facing bottom case cover as gravity would have drained all the water down here and sat there until it slowly evaporated.
- components on the main logic board near the wireless board (on the antenna side)
- IO board magsafe connector solder area
- Any tall component tightly packed together have alleys that trap moisture and high corrosion
Even follow Louis Rossmann's video to look at a resistors in front of the pair of diode that supplies power from battery + AC adapter. Battery side (R7006) looked like it was a little cooked. This is a great tutorial if you have an A1466 with these symptoms and some basic electronics knowledge.
I was sure R7006 needed to be replaced but thought I first scrubbed down all these corroded areas with IPA and near both board side of SMC in particular given the symptoms. The MBA became fully functional afterwards (also tested all the keys). Lucky us.
An ultrasonic cleaner would do even better job but don't have one. We'll probably leave it running perfectly for now and go ultrasonic cleaning path if further problems in the future.
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