MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Early 2011 AirPort/Bluetooth Assembly Replacement

Written By: Andrew Bookholt

Comments: 8

MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Early 2011 AirPort/Bluetooth Assembly Replacement

Difficulty

Moderate

Steps

Time Required

No estimate

Introduction

Internal Prerequisite.

Tools

Step 1

Use the flat end of a spudger to pry the AirPort/Bluetooth ribbon cable connector up from its socket on the logic board.

N.B! Thank you very much all you here on iFixit! Some IMPORTANT notes. Be very careful BEFORE prying the connectors up and down. They are very fragile and the picture could actually be seen as showing a bending loading in their weakest direction, AROUND its slender axis. The connector is slender and inserted on the logic board, so the gentle "walking" up and down should be done ALONG their slender direction and WITHOUT touching the adjacent connectors. If bending is done around its axis the soldering comes apart and the cable is done and gone. Just happened. These flat cables are one of the weakest design spots in my experience. They are a major time, money and geist consuming reason for malfunction like Wi-Fi connection problems, HDD, SSD not found internally but externally from USB issues et al being found on different forums. Thanks again and again.

Greg - 16/06/17

Step 2

Carefully pull the camera cable out of its socket on the logic board.
Pull the cable parallel to the face of the logic board. Pulling it upward may damage the logic board or the cable itself.

Be extremely careful on step 6 with late 2011 model unibody macbooks! The cable is connected very tightly to the board and has a great chance of ripping if you just pull the cable.

Tim Rauls - 30/08/17

My cable is broken, have the part number or code to buy?

VÍCTOR RIFFO - 11/04/21

I found there was plenty of length in the camera cable (as it goes around two sides of the optical drive) so does not need to be disconnected - just ease it out of the slot alongside the drive and lay it diagonally across.

Nic Blinston - 09/05/21

Step 3

Carefully move the AirPort/Bluetooth ribbon cable out of the way as you peel the camera cable off the adhesive securing it to the subwoofer and the AirPort/Bluetooth bracket.
De-route the camera cable out from under the retaining finger molded into the AirPort/Bluetooth bracket.

Take a few phone close-ups of this corner of your system prior to disassembly. Extra photos really help during reassembly.

airshack - 02/01/18

Step 4

Use the tip of a spudger to pry the antenna connector closest to the logic board up from its socket on the AirPort/Bluetooth board.
De-route the antenna cable from under the finger molded into the AirPort/Bluetooth bracket.

Step 5

Using the method described in the last step, disconnect the remaining three antenna connectors.
De-route their cables from the slots cut in the AirPort/Bluetooth bracket.

I found re-attaching these antennae connectors the trickiest bit by far as they appear very delicate and seating them correctly was fiddly. In the end lighting them from the side with a small torch helped to check their position before gently pushing them down. The first one made a clicking sound as it connected, the other two went on silently. MBP wifi working perfectly now. I’m fairly sure that was at least £100 of labour had I taken it in for repair so thanks ifixit for saving me money and for the warm glow of accomplishment!

Andrew - 18/07/18

Actually, on my repair attempt, one antenna cable broke (on the image the bottom right one in the red square), I’m not sure whether it broke already before or was morbid somehow. Fact is. suddenly I had this cable in my fingers, and was sure I completely broke the macbook and need to find a new display now.

But as it turned out: the Mac is still fully working, including WIFI, BT, Camera etc. So apart from my huge relief, I want to address that these cables may break easily at their connection with the display. And that one antenna might be not mandatory for WIFI to work.

huedrant - 29/03/21

How do I know which of these cables goes in which slot when attaching the new display?

BellaVulpa -