Chosen Solution
My first question on here so hello from the UK ! Been a big fan of iFixit for years and have carried out several successful repairs and upgrades using this site but this one has me stumped. Little back story: I run a small IT consultancy and have been a Mac user even before they were Macs and actually Apple computers so you can guess my age :) I currently use an old battered MBA 13" mid 2013 and although it is ok, the keyboard is really dodgy and it has now developed an issue that the A key stops working every now and then and I have flex the mac to get it working again. So I got hold of a non working MBA 13" Mid 2013 which is in better condition, keyboard, case etc. This unit does not work. You can get the Green light on the MagSafe but no charge (no Orange light). I took it apart to see if I could salvage the SSD but that failed as it wouldn’t mount even in an OWC unit . So my next idea was to see if I can swap the internals from my working MBA mid 2013 into the MBA mid 2013. Now you may say that is impossible as the top case for these are so expensive so in that case, would it be better to try to fix this MBA mid 2013 and get my data onto it ? Happy to try anything. edited because I made a mistake on the model of my mac, whoops Update (03/20/2018) Well I fixed it ! using my new iFixit Magnetic mat, a whole bunch of tools and a few hours I set to it. If you take your time, read up on the well documented repair guide it is possible so kudos to the guide. To summarise, I had a working MBA 13 mid 2013 but it had a damaged keyboard in as far the left hand side had heat damage to a few keys, the A and 1 keys would stop working and the backspace key was completely broken. I had a donor MBA 13 mid 2013 that was either a faulty logic board or faulty SSD. Either way the tp case was far better than mine so needed to do a swap. Took apart the non working one all the way down to the top case . Then did the same on mine and swapped over the following : battery, left hand speaker, logic board, I/O board, fan and SSD. Once done I tested and all looked good. Then replaced the old screws for the bottom case with new ones, fired it up and reset the clock. Then tested the keyboard , isight camera (the connector is so small that I was worried it wasn’t seated in properly) and speakers. So result !
Depending on what happened to the other system you maybe lucky a straight logic board transfer will work. But! If the system was liquid damaged the keyboard & trackpad may not be working!
