A friend of mine gave a an old ThinkPad T41 and it’s in great condition for one of these without any cracks in the chassis. There are a few marks on the display but it doesn’t look like it’s cracked (I don’t have the right power supply to test it out).
The biggest problem with it so far is that the rubberised finish on the lid has turned sticky. I tried to wipe it down with diluted isopropyl alcohol and while it looks pretty clean now it’s still very sticky.
Is there a way to fix the stickiness without full-on scraping the coating off?
Hi, have you tried acetone? Chemically (propanone) it seems very similar to isopropyl alcohol but maybe it’s different enough…never tried on a thinkpad but on other stuff it always worked for me.
Also maybe the cloth/paper you were using did not pick up enough, you need to actually remove the material (used to make plastic “soft to the touch”) that became sticky.
I removed the rubber coating from my thinkpad 380xd with lacquer thinner. It’s strong enough to remove the coating without damaging the plastic underneath. Took a lot of effort to get all of it off, but it’s no longer sticky!
