Hi, Am looking to repair my power cable for my late 2011 Mac Book Pro as the wire covering at the L connection are frayed. Is it possible to repair the 60w power adapter or should I replace the whole cable??
MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), iOS 10.2.1
Thank you for your response... I happy to have a go at replacing the L connection myself as have located a megSafe 60w 1 replacement cable - just find the Apple price of replacing the whole adaptor quite excessive.
Again thanks for your time and advise.
Apple does not consider that part of the power adapter field-replaceable, and they do not repair them. If it appears to be a particularly egregious safety hazard, they have some latitude to replace them for safety reasons, but do not count on it. Most Users just have to buy a new one.
You can replace with either L-shape or T-shape power adapter-end, but it must be as large or larger (in Watts produced).
Be careful not to select the more slender MagSafe-2, which will not fit older Macs.
That's what I thought, so I had a go at it several times. It was not fun.
The first case I tried was to open the power brick. It is completely glued shut. You will have to slice and saw at the plastic around the seam for a long time to get it to yield, and I did some damage in doing this. When you finally get it open, you find that the power cord is attach at two places that cannot be reached with a soldering iron without additional unsoldering of a lot of components. You may be able to splice the two wires about an inch away from the circuit board.
Then you need to figure out how to put it back together. I used some white epoxy from construction work.
The second case I tried was to splice the cord outside the power brick. The 'tragic flaw' in this approach is that one conductor is spread out into a 100 percent shield of the second conductor, and to effectively shield them again produces a very large bump in the cable that is a lightning rod for later failures. This could be used as a stationary power adapter for a desk.
The third case was to try to replace just the cable-end. The parts are microscopic, including a tiny circuit board with the LEDs on it, and shielding them from each other while soldering them back together is an exercise in self-abuse. The L-shape is much worse than the T-shape, but both are horrible. The cable outer skin is horrendous. Then trying to get them back into the housing is a nightmare.
So what should be an interesting project quickly turns into a 'rite of passage'.
Buy a new one. Do not risk it unless you are advanced in electronics - have the tools required, and can test it first NOT on your Mac. Agreed with above, while there are a thousand videos, do not risk it if you have never done heavy electronics as that MacBook Pro can be essentially upgraded to almost a current machine.
ifixit.com is a great resource for this stuff but if you don't have 2k on hand for a new one, and having done this in the past, make sure you know exactly what you are cutting into.
You should replace it.
looking to repair my 60w power cable on mac book pro
