Fix for the palmrest "creak"

[darrenf]

The palmrests on the T4x's that I've owned develop a "creak" over time just to the right of the spacer between the touchpad and TrackPoint buttons.

Removing the palmrest reveals that there is a plastic rib on the underside that mates with a slot in the black plastic above the hard drive caddy. The fit is exact and any dust or grit that gets in there causes the plastic to wear slightly and creak when flexed.

To fix this, I removed the keyboard and palmrest and then removed one side of the "slot" above the hard drive using a utility knife. When you look at the area I'm describing, it will become obvious what I cut -- it's the thin strip of plastic on the side of the slot closest to the center of the laptop. To prevent the squeak from turning into a tap, I covered the area with a single strip of electrical tape and trimmed to fit.

Once the palmrest and keyboard are reinstalled, the palmrest is rock solid and the creak is completely gone.

-darren

[MrStaticVoid]

After reading your post I wanted a less destructive way of solving my creak fix. I took a look at the "slot" you spoke of and figured that if I jammed something in there the palmrest would not creak. So I cut a piece of notebook paper about 1.5 in by 0.5 in and twisted it so that it would fit in the slot. After reassembling my ThinkPad, I have no more creak and it feels great! I took a picture of what I mean. Sorry about the blurriness, its a bad camera.

http://userpages.umbc.edu/~jlee23/creak_fix.jpg

[K. Eng]

Here's what I did.

This week I noticed a bit of flexiness in the area of the palmrest below the area between the spacebar key and right hand ALT key.

I removed the palmrest and turned it over. Look at the plastic rib that darrenf referred to. I taped a thin pieces of sticky sided foam (about the thickenss of a penny) to the rib, and remounted the palmrest.

The palmrest feels much more solid now.

[jcentrel]

Where do you buy the sticky sided foam?

[K. Eng]

My ThinkPad broke a few months ago and I sent it in for service. IBM fixed it but managed to loose a rubber foot in the process, so I called IBM and they sent me a small kit of spare parts for the T4x.

Sticky sided foam was included.

You can use Scotch tape and thin packing foam to do this fix as well. I had run out of tape so i used the sticky sided foam.

Where do you buy the sticky sided foam?

[brewt]

Replying to an old thread, but wanted to add another non-destructive way to fix right palmrest creaks (finally got around to doing something about it on my T42). Instead of cutting off the plastic rib, just place a piece of tape over it (I used some 3M Durapore cloth tape - it's thin and not made of plastic so it shouldn't make any noise rubbing against plastic). I believe the reason it's creaking in the first place is because plastic is rubbing against plastic, so the cloth tape stops that from happening.

[agarza]

any way of fixing the palmrest creak on the left side of the palmrest, just above where you insert pCMCIA cards. The sound is making me crazy