Inspiron 1525 laptop, not charging, loose hinges, and erratic keyboard repair notes

This laptop worked 100% for several years before this incident.

I spilled a small amount of red juice on the keyboard. While I was picking up the laptop to move it away from papers, it shut down abruptly. I decided to remove & clean the keyboard. In doing so it became obvious that liquid had also dripped down onto the internals, and my very loose hinges needed attention, so I decided to completely disassemble, clean & fix these issues.

Disassembly may take an hour, but is still easier than some other models. All the parts and videos needed can still be found at parts-people.com

The hinges had become very stiff, and the mounting screws had loosened over time. As a result of the extra force, one of the plastic hinge mounts had broken off from the screen backshell. I ordered new hinges, but they did not look as well made, so I put the old hinges in a vice and loosened the hinge spring nut very slightly and oiled the hinge. I found that for the hinge to work properly, it will be so stiff you can just barely move it with your bare hands. Any looser will be too loose.

I repaired the broken plastic boss in the backshell by gluing it with black ABS pipe glue. This fuses the plastic, and is probably the strongest repair short of buying a new backshell.

When I removed the motherboard, I found the CPU heat sink clogged with lint, so I cleaned it. There still was red juice puddled under some ICs, so I sprayed it repeatedly with electronics cleaner and reinstalled it. After that a new problem appeared, the common 'battery not charging' problem. I had two working chargers and a fully charged battery, and it booted from either, so I could tell it was either the DC power jack issue or the motherboard. In taking it apart again, I was not careful and was sure I had damaged the motherboard. I picked up a brand new one including the DC jack for around $55.

I swapped the CPU and memory, and after reassembly it powered up once I reseated the memory properly.

After these steps, the hinges and charging worked properly but the keyboard had just a few keys that behaved erratically. There is a post about adding some scotch tape to make the flex connector hold more tightly to the KB flex cable. I tried that but it did not seem to be the issue. I removed the keyboard and used half a bottle of isopropal alcohol to repeatedly soak and flush the keyboard keys & pan. There is a lip around the pan so I simply filled it up, worked all the keys repeatedly, and poured out the
liquid. Lots of red juice residue flushed out. I drained the keyboard and dried it upside down for a couple of days. It is a sandwich of plastic and metal pieces and there are lots of places to trap liquid, so it does take awhile to dry out, even for alcohol. I would not use water.

After reassembly, the KB worked 100% again.