Friday 13 November 2009

G4 Titanium Powerbook Repair / Respray

Throwing everything into a shoebox was slightly shortsighted.

Anybody that had been reading advntrgeez, before it died and I started here, may have known that I had decided to take apart and re-spray my Apple Titanium G4 Powerbook. Its a pretty random/geeky thing to do, but to replace the hinges (which were broken) the entire case needed to be dismantled, seals carefully broken and then reglued and reassembled. I thought I might aswell give it a new lick of a paint while I was at it as I wouldn't be able to dismantle it again after the glue set. Colorware paints laptops professionally, and I used their visualisation tool to decide on the colour scheme.


Colours decided it was time to source some literature and then acquire some paints etc. As you might expect theres plenty on the web about this sort of thing (I wouldn't have bothered trying to repair it if there wasn't) however regards paints its mostly brands availible in USA or at extortionate prices here in the U.K. In the end I used car paint from Halfords, thinking that if its good enough for a car it'll do a laptop!


The online guides leave very little out and give an easy to follow step by step procedure. However, I left out pretty much all the sanding, as after doing one surface I realised it would take me forever to sand them all, and also I didn't feel confident in not destroying any progress made by sanding heavily later in the project.

Starting point, looking pretty rough around the edges!

Case painting isn't overly difficult, but plenty of patience is required; half an hour between coats, weeks between primer and paint and the same again before clear can be applied. These time delays weren't really thought through by myself, and its another reason why sanding was avoided as it would have added another couple weeks onto the project.

looking back I can't believe it has taken me so long to complete it, at least 6 months after starting; it could have been completed within a month or so if I'd not been so pusillanimous about it all. However its nice to be now typing from my custom orangoutang powerbook!

A couple coats of brilliant orange.

2 coats of clear.


Decapitated but all the inards are still working (running the left screen), thankfully nothing had fried in the the 6 month interim.


And yes the screen is still working, time to break out the glue and finish reassembling once and for all!


The finished article, not too shabby, well except for a couple small areas due to user incompetence ;)








Links for painting/moddding cases.

Linear Case mods

Spooky's paint guide

Lappy paint overhaul

Red pepper Paintjob

ModTheBox

Low Tech Paint Job

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8 comment(s) so far, add your thoughts -->>here<<--:

Alan Sloman said...

Interestingly I see that your previous post was "Music to stay sane to..."

:-)

Keith said...

No connection at all, well, maybe a wee bit ;)

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