MagSafe Repair

I recently bought a broken MagSafe power adapter for the MacBook on eBay with a frayed cable at connector end for $19.01. I wasn't sure when I bid on it that the brick is still good or not, but I thought it was worth a chance to safe a bunch of Moola when compared to Apple's price.

Step 1: Cut of the plug from the cable at the frayed end. On the cable end I strip about half an inch of the outer insulation and found that the cable only has two conductors, the center one being the positive side. Plugged in to a wall outlet, the voltage measured 6.5 Vdc. I thought to myself, hemh, it should have read 16.5 volts. So I CAREFULLY checked the voltage of my other MagSafe and it too measured about 6.5 volts, with no load. Based on that I guessed that the brick is probably ok.

Step 2: Using a small vise grip on the metal/magnetic part, I carefully slide the white portion of the MagSafe connector off from the magnet. Then I slit one end of the whitish translucent insulation cover that surrounded the small circuit board. I carefully peeled that off from the metal plug/circuit board. This step exposed the three part of the wires, one being the positive center wire, the other two are split ground wires.

Step 3: I removed the old broken pieces of wires from the now exposed circuit board.

Step 4: Insert two different size of heat shrink tubings on the cable end of the power adapter, then the white outer cover of the MagSafe. I split the ground wire into two bundles. On the center wire (white sleeved) I stripped about 1/8th inch of the insulation. The wire ends are then soldered as shown in the picture.

Step 5: Put all the pieces back together and test it. Notice that the green and subsequent orange glow of the LEDs indicated that all is well.

Step 6: Slide the smaller diameter heat shrink towards the plug and shrink it. Next the larger diameter heat shrink and shrink that too.

I don't know how to label and sequence the pictures in this blog, but you can see the progression of each step in the attached pictures.