Thinkpads Forum

The lid of my T61 is loose, like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBUs2_ueX78

I thought when I have to open it anyway to replace the keyboard (see my other recent thread here) I could try to fix this also.
For the laptop I had before the Thinkpad (other brand) it was just tightening two screws, will it be the same easy fix for the T61 or it will it be the 'complicated' method described here for the R60 ?

https://ventilatorxor.wordpress.com/201 ... lid-hinge/

(I have a T61 widescreen if that matters)

The loose lid is the hinge itself, tightening mounting screws won't fix it. The keyed steel hinge pin is held in relatively soft aluminum which deforms after use and the hinge pin starts to rotate in the casting because of the wear.

In my experiences, the replacement hinges on eBay aren't very good either - they're not loose like the OEM hinges but they aren't very stiff. One set I bought could barely hold the screen at a 45 degree angle, in fact. If I closed it to 30 degrees it would fall shut.

Replacing the hinges isn't a simple task - the LCD has to come off and apart which requires removing the palm rest, keyboard and keyboard bezel. The front LCD trim piece has to come off as well as the back plastic to reveal the roll cage - at that point you can get at the hinges. The article you linked to roughly sums up the issue.

I wouldn't bother replacing the hinges unless they are dangerously loose. All of them eventually loosen up to a certain point, and don't get any looser.

Thanks for the replies.

Knowing now it won't be as easy as I hoped, yeah, I probably won't bother.
It's not that I think it will fall apart in the near future, just something I find slightly annoying.

You may try doing what this person did to an R60 hinge to reduce hinge play: https://ventilatorxor.wordpress.com/201 ... lid-hinge/

I am not quite sure if this would work on T61 hinges since they are different, but they may be close enough to work. Nearly all thinkpads suffered from loose hinges under lenovo for some years. The only exceptions seem to be the X300/X301, T/W510 - T/W530, and post xx30 models.

theterminator93 wrote: In my experiences, the replacement hinges on eBay aren't very good either - they're not loose like the OEM hinges but they aren't very stiff. One set I bought could barely hold the screen at a 45 degree angle, in fact. If I closed it to 30 degrees it would fall shut.

That's odd. I bought some on eBay for a T61p that I was working on and didn't see any issues with them, at least not right away. It may depend on the supplier, but it is a time-consuming procedure for sure. It's very much doable, but not for the faint of heart. I'll wait to hear of the long-term reliability of these replacement hinges before making that commitment for my own laptop.

Probably. I figured they all come from the same manufacturer in China, so after seeing two separate sets (one I bought, another came on a parts unit I bought) with vastly varying quality I decided to just live with what I had.

Many of the hinges on ebay from china are cheap knock-offs. I even bought a 4:3 T61 set that was "genuine" but it ended up getting so loose in a few months that there was easily 20 degrees of play. Bought a set from a seller in california and haven't had an issue since.