Thinkpads Forum

Yesterday I have received a really badly beaten up ThinkPad T61 14.1" widescreen that I would say it's the worst condition ThinkPad (that hasn't been opened up before) that I have ever received.
With that in mind, not surprisingly the hinges are really wobbly on it, that it feels like you are going to break something every time you operate the hinges.
And no, it's not just the screws. tightening the screws reduces about 20% of the wobble but it's still way outside of what anyone calls usable.
Now I have always suspected the widescreen T6x/T400/T500 hinges are literally copycats of Dell hinges (widescreen only, the 4:3 standard ones use the same design as T4x and don't have this problem unless they literally snap off), so with my secret sauce of fixing the hinge wobble on Latitudes, I thought I should bring the experiment to this already beaten up T61.
Here's an overview of what I did:
I removed the lid cover and the LCD bezel, then I removed inverter and the screen and so that only the magnesium cage and the hinges remain and I can easily reattach the hinges to the magnesium cage whenever I need to.
Then notice the opening on the left end of the left hinge, and the right end of the right hinge. That's where this repair all takes place in.
I first lubricated by dripping oil inside those openings, reattach the cage and operate the hinges a few times so the hinges are not stiff.
Then I use Krazy Superglue and drip a drop or two inside the opening. This sounds counterintuitive to the lubrication earlier, but the reason why the hinge wobbles on these models is the metal casing of the hinge gets worn down and enlarged over time that the axle inside can move around (see one of the videos below for the right hinge), and what this superglue does is it fills in those gap to reduce the wobble.
Do not use cheap dollar store ones, otherwise your repair will last just a few days!
I applied way too much in that video, and it dripped right through so I need to wipe it quickly. Have a paper towel ready for this purpose. Do NOT use presoaked ones, I learnt the hard way that superglue reacts and creates smoke with the fabric on those sanitising wipes!
Then I reattached both hinges to the cage again, and leave it at an angle for 5 minutes so that the axle doesn't move around for the superglue to dry.
After that, I take the hinges off again, and use a wrench to loosen the superglue that might have glued both sides of the hinge together. This is necessary or else it might break your cage!
Relubricate when necessary, then put it back to the cage. Test it and see if the wobble really went away.
Then I just reassemble everything (use threadlocker on the hinge screws while at it) and presto!
I have included before and after comparisons and there's no need for me to tell you which one is before the fix and which one is after!
I imagine this also works exactly the same on 15.4" T61 widescreen models, as well as T400/T500 models.
This trick also worked for me on Latitudes as old as Pentium M models and as new as the Ivy bridge models, and also a Toshiba Satellite A70. Glad it works here too.
Here are 3 videos: one before, one after and one showing the source of the wobble and me applying way too much superglue!
https://1drv.ms/u/s!At7-rt1KJ7WviP9cxr9 ... Q?e=jxS5mS

It looks like you solved the problem, well done!
My only question would be: for how long?

RealBlackStuff wrote: ↑

Sat May 15, 2021 11:37 pm

It looks like you solved the problem, well done!
My only question would be: for how long?

Well from my experiences of applying this trick on half a dozen of various Dell Latitude laptops with the same hinge design, with normal use every day if you have done the mod right (with quality superglue), it can last about 6 months before it might generate about 0.5cm worth of wobble, which I think is still more than tolerable for most, and it's still gonna be far better than the condition I received that thing in.
Avoid opening past 135 degrees too, that can stress the superglue really hard.
That's the result I got on the Dell that I have done this same trick to and daily driven it most of the time.
In this case though, by about 6 months I think the poor LCD bezel is fully gonna disintegrate anyway (it's currently hot glued in place all along the right side, both bottom hinge screw holes stripped too), assuming the motherboard with the NVS140M and a 07 date code doesn't fail. In fact I am surprised that GPU is alive at all with the poor shape of that T61 is in, and after seeing so many unsafe G86 GPUs failing across all laptop brands.
If you already replaced the hinge though, you could just try this trick on the wobbly pair you swapped out, and that will bring some life back to that pair of hinge and can be useful spare parts in case your current pair breaks or wears out. This is what I am doing with my dell laptop.

My current "collection" jumps from T23 straight to T440p/X240, nothing in between (except T60 below).
They are all (still) going strong, no problems with wobbly hinges or whatever.

The exception is a 14" 4:3 T60 base only, without lid (or hinges), that is only used for testing LED-mods.