Replacement of upper top casing on a macbook pro, with a casing from a different year

[MacAndersen]

Hello

I accidentally spilled water onto my macbook pro's keyboard. The repair shop has offered me to fix it by replacing the upper top casing of the unibody, but due to the repair fee being very expensive, I am considering doing it myself.

My question is: Does the upper casing have to be from the same year that my macbook was produced? I have 13inch Macbook pro from early 2011 (April).

Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[Mr Rabbit]

More than likely yes. In the older, non unibody, MacBooks & MacBook Pros you could sometimes substitute one generation for another. These were designed much differently though in that all of the screw bosses that the internal components mount to were part of the bottom case.

With the unibody design this idea was completely reversed, where the bottom cases are almost identical between generations but the mounting points inside the top cases are almost always have small changes between generations. So, while all of the components may physically fit inside last year / next year's top case there is a good chance that one or two of the components won't bolt down properly.

In your situation I would try to determine the part number of your Mac's top case then try to find a suitable replacement online. I will typically buy parts from PowerBookMedic.com and iFixit.org. I would expect your top case to run anywhere from $150-250.

Hope that helps!