I got some sand in my MagSafe 2 port and as a result the pins got messed up – they look “burnt,” I guess because the electrical flow got messed up. As a result it is hard to get a proper connection, I have to jiggle it around a lot, and even when it does work it gets extremely hot now.
The burn is on both sides of the connection (the cable and the computer) so I can’t fix this by just getting a new cable.
I have tried cleaning it with 70% rubbing alcohol on Q-tips as I saw recommended on another site, but it didn’t do anything at all.
Can you recommend anything else I can try? I need this computer for work so I don’t want to send it to the repair depot to fix. Also I don’t want to do anything that would make it worse, especially since I’m still under warranty.
This is a mid-2015 MacBook Pro and MagSafe 2 port. Pics:
Best Answer
Yes, those are definitely burnt and this is because the sand allowed a gap just large enough that the electrical current arced from the adapter to DC-In port.
You can't clean this with alcohol - that's actually the last step. What you need is something that's mildly abrasive. You may have more luck cleaning the MagSafe adapter because those are pins where as the DC-In board are four conductive "dimples" surrounded by the most fragile plastic you'll ever run across.
What you can try:
Once you've "scrubbed" the contacts, you can then use the alcohol to clean the contacts properly. Basically, it's like cleaning "burnt on" anything in the kitchen - you've got to scrub it off first, before you polish it. Until you get it clean, it's not going to make proper contact.
If all else fails, the DC-In board is actually very cheap and very easy to replace.