M14x R1 - Refurbish Project

I picked up a pretty good deal on Gumtree yesterday for an M14x R1 - $250AUD (i7 2760QM, SSD plus DVD drive caddy, working battery, adapter and even a decent mouse). The palmrest had been covered in cloth and was stuck to the old soft-touch material. The seller said the palmrest material had degraded over the years and it had gone really sticky so he put the cloth down on top. Never seen anything like it.
Last night, with a few glasses of red in me, I decided to rip off the cloth, remove the old sticky soft-touch and get back to bare plastic. He previously had stickers on the soft-touch lid and I tried to clean off the residue but it still left the lid sticky so I decided to remove the old soft-touch from the lid as well.

Once it's all gone I'll do a fresh respray once I decide what colour to go with.

I thought I'd film what I was doing last night so my hope is to document the process from start to finish.

Interesting note, I had always thought the soft-touch was a black material but it's more like some sort of clear resin. It comes off like glue, with a bit of help from Solvit Citrus Clean spray.

 

Palmrest with the soft-touch removed.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Here is the lid with the soft-touch removed. If it was polished up it would be a nice metallic black



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

My brand new M14xR2 palm rest is already becoming sticky after less than a year. It's still good and doesn't cause issues but idk why this is an issue on the m14x series and not on m17x and m18x

 

Yeah that’s weird. My M18x is still perfect after 8 years.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Prepped and ready for priming. Haven’t decided on a base colour though




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Primed. Need to let it set for 24 hours and then lightly sand before the base coat




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I’m an idiot and forgot to prep and prime the main frame.
I went and got some Brilliant Red auto spray but I’m thinking an orange would be better.






Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I think either color will look good.

 

I'll do this one red and I'll do orange on one of my Rangers.

Seeing MrFox's pearl orange/yellow M18x all those years ago is what initially inspired me to start paint modding laptops. At the time I thought there was no chance of me trying anything like that. It took a few years to finally give it a shot.