R51 with invertor or LCD issues

[daddyo731]

Background: Work for large organization in Georgia. Repaired about 275 laptops this year and replaced another 250 laptops: R32, R40, R51, R52, T4x and some R60. Have seen 30-50% of R51s (north of 100) fail with dim or unreadable LCDs. Invertor rarely fixes the issue, replacing the LCD is somewhat more successful, but due to cost of systemboard, we generally just replace all of the others. Any thoughts on this issue? I have talked with local IBM reps without success and I would love to repair the leftovers rather than just replace. I have recently discovered LCDs with an audible 'short' that will blow the invertor boards. Any way to test the LCDs and/or invertors without blowing up the other component?
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. It bugs me that we have to swap out so many of these without repairing them.
Thanks!

[Harryc]

The CCFL's are bad in the dim screened R51's. If you want to fix them order 30 to 50 LCD panels. You will not be successful replacing just the bulbs in that many machines..the labor time alone would be through the roof.

[daddyo731]

Is this a common issue with the R51 laptops? With the R32s, a replacement invertor almost always corrected this issue. Does it sound correct that the bad LCDs are killing known-good invertors? I tested with about 30 invertors and 20 different LCDs today and it seems that with several of the bad LCDs, after testing with them, the invertor also turned up bad after being plugged up with the bad LCD. LCD's are around $200 each and I am not sure that I can justify the cost or the time. Luckily for them, the laptop repair that we do is completely on the side and doesn't interrupt my regular job. Thanks for the information.

[Harryc]

Hard to say how common the bad inverter thing is, but I've heard of it. I believe it is due to the defective CCFL introducing too high of a load on the inverter. It is common for R51's to have their backlights (CCFL's) going out at this point due to the age of the machine.