Laptop DC jack repair, solder

[KrillBee]

I have a laptop that was given to me, its a Dell inspiron 1150, celeron 2.6 ghz. Its a decent machine, the only problem is that the power jack doesnt work well, its loose and its hard to have the plug in just right.

I took it apart and tried to do a little solder repair, but I just have 1 soldering iron with a blunt tip and no heat control on it, so it gets real hot. im not very good at soldering, and there are 9 points on this jack where it connects to the motherboard. i soldered one lose one, but the others are hard to do because its loose in between the jack and the board.
needless to say i put it all back together and it wasnt any better.

I really want to fix this laptop up and use it, but i dont think i have the solder skills to unsolder and resolder 9 points at once.

Is there an easier way to solder this? How much would someone charge me if I removed the board and just handed them the board and said 'do this' ? How hard is it to find someone who does this kind of stuff for cheap?

used boards go for $150-200 on ebay, way more than i want to spend on this laptop.

 

[Gibson486]

you need to take the board out if you have not done so. there should be this one ground pin right under. You may also want to try using sme soldering wick. It doe snot take much skill at all.

To use the wick, you just place the wick over the solder and heat the wick with the iron. The wick will pick up the solder. Do it to all the pins. it should remove most of of the solder and it should remove enough to let you take the jack out.

 

[jevans64]

I've done this before mainly for friends and co-workers. I would consider this basic solder work with IC mounting / pin bridging being more difficult. You might as well just get a new jack which are readily available on eBay. Odds are the pins are just loose from the movement and heating / cooling cycles but you may have a few broken pins. You could also just have a loose connection, esp. if it is a round pin. I have a set of picks that I use to lift up the hold-down arm inside the jack. It is just a piece of thin metal that presses against the plug when it is inserted into the jack, which holds it in place.

I would disassemble the laptop down to the motherboard to make your job easier. Instructions in PDF format are available on the Dell website under service. Just select make, model, and manuals.

Like Gibson said, you will need something to desolder the existing points. I use a dedicated de-soldering iron ( quicker ) for that task but solder wick will do the job cheaply. Your local electronics hobby store ( or maybe a Radio Shack ) will have a standard 15w/30w switchable iron for roughly $30. I'd also grab some fine solder, flux, and the wick while you are there.

Most electronics repair shops will charge you anywhere from $50 to $100 for the repair work plus parts.