How to repair your apple power supply cord, A Step by Step Guide:

About a year ago my apple power supply cord started acting up on me. Sometime it just wouldn't charge my laptop. So I would have to wiggle the wires around to make it work. Then it got so bad that I had to stand on my head while holding the power supply thingy upside down and sideways while tapping my head and rubbing my belly at the same time. And if you think that was bad the other day sparks just started flying out of the thing right near the white box thingy. I had had enough! I said to myself "I am going to tear this thing apart", my intent was to (a) fix it, or (b) have as much fun destroying it as possible. It turned out that I somehow managed to do option A.

Now I know that I'm not the only one who has had this problem so I figured I'll tell you how I fixed it. It turns out that what happened was I wrapped it and unwrapped the cord so many times that the wires broke inside the white cord. That would normally be no problem to fix except that the wires were broken right there where the cord comes out of the power supply. And I'm sure that is what happens to all of them.

Keep in mind that I have the older version power supply so I'm not sure if apple fixed the weak cord issue with the newer magnetic versions. Anyhow, for legal reasons, this should NOT be tried by anyone except me:)

I don't have any photos of me tearing the thing apart as I wasn't for sure that this would work. But what you want to do (cough, cough, I mean what I want to do) is break the casing apart somehow. I used a pair of wire cutter and a flat head screwdriver. It is very apparent apple didn't want anyone to open this thing up as it took a lot of effort to pry it open.

Once you get it open you will now (just barely) have enough room to strip the wires back away from the break to make a new connection. This wire was very odd in that it didn't have two separate wires but two layers (you will see what I'm talking about) Separate the first layer of metal wiring then use a pair of wire strippers to carefully expose the metal on the inner wire. Do the same on the cord side and then match the two sides up and twist the wires together.

This is what you should have now. (and this is where I knew it was going to work and started taking pictures. DOH!)




Now wrap that inner wire with electrical tape making sure no wire is left exposed.


Next wrap the outer wires together and then wrap the whole shebang together with the tape:


Next you'll notice that the wire will need to come out a different way:


So cut this part off with your wire cutters:


Push the taped part inside and bring the wire out the side:


Now tape it up with electrical tape. It is starting to look real good by this point:)


Here I taped the end for what I call "extra bendability security":


And voila, Good as new! Even looks better than the original too:


But remember, This should not be attempted by anyone but a certified electrician and even then maybe not!

Enjoy,

-Matt