I’m trying to repair my Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 laptop, model 15ACH6. The plastic is cracked/broken at both hinges, so I am replacing the “upper case.”
The manual says I need screws of certain sizes. One of these sizes is M2 x L11.5 which I can’t seem to find at any major online retailer. I’m not a screw-expert, so maybe I’m looking in the wrong spot or entering the wrong information.
All the screw sets I’m seeing appear to leave out the 11.5 screws.
Does anyone know where to find these?
It’s bad enough that I have to fix what shouldn’t be broken in the first place, but to add insult to injury the brilliant engineers at Lenovo decided to use extremely hard to find screws. Couldn’t they have just added that extra .5 whatever to the upper case so it doesn’t break in the first place? I’d really rather have a thicker laptop than one that breaks in this extremely inconvenient and preventable manner. Planned obsolescence is alive and well.
11.5mm seems like a really oddball length. 12mm is the closest common length, and 0.5mm (.020") isn’t much. Have you already confirmed that a 12mm long screw won’t work? If so, grinding the tip down slightly with a rotary tool or bench grinder may be your best bet. If you can, thread a nut onto the screw before you grind it down. That way any threads that are messed up by the grinding will be restored when you take the nut off.
Good tip on that nut! Just to add my own little life hack. Before you go to the final length, turn the nut all the way to the end, then grind off the last bit including a part of the nut. That way the nut prevents the threads from becoming deformed. The nut will bend back the threads otherwise, but depending on the size and material, it may crack or sheer instead of neatly bend.