I bought a 13" Macbook Air 2015 i7 with 8gb ram for really cheap from eBay. The whole thing worked well for a couple weeks before the Macbook started exhibiting behavior such as it shutting down at 20%-40$ constantly, and upon power-on showed low battery indicator which requires the magsafe charger to power it on again. Once plugged in, the battery would read around 20%-40%. This got annoying quickly so I tried SMC resets, RAM resets but it didn't work, but using Apple's diagnostics, it said that the Macbook's battery was not charging correctly, so I bought a new one from Amazon and replaced the old one with the new one.
The fix went well until the behavior started popping up again. However, this time whenever I closed the Macbook or shut it off at around 20%-40% for a long time (i.e. around 1+ hours) and power it on again, the low battery indicator would show up again. I would again need to plug in the charger to boot with the same read of 20%-40%. This behavior is almost identical to the previous battery. I downloaded coconutBattery and the health signs show normal health (99.7% health) with the exception of the age being about 2554 days. Using Apple Diagnostics, no issues were found.
I have a sneaking suspicion that it has to do with the board itself or battery but I don't know where to start. My battery is still within the return window. I have another Macbook Air but it is of lower spec (13" 2015 i5 4 gb ram), and I was wondering if I could transplant components between boards. Is there a way to fix this issue? I have a soldering iron and an iFixit toolkit.
Thanks in advance,
- FlightlessDrillbit
the 2017 and 2015 logic boards are completely interchangeable.
MacBook Air boards are the worst. they have components mere millimeters away from exposure to elements. check your charger too... could be a bad or aftermarket charger is doing this. but change boards and see what happens to your next battery.
It's hard to give you a direct answer if you never fixed a MacBook motherboard before. The problem could be SMC ISL, Charging board or short related. You need to be familiar with how the board works and voltage rails. What have you tried so far. Are you getting an green light, green light.
I did interchange the logic board between the Macbooks; this is how I found that the battery was bad and had the problem fixed for at least a short while. Using Apple's Diagnostics test, it showed nothing wrong when the charger was plugged in. I forgot to mention, the eBay Macbook did not come with a charger. I used my current charger and it appears to still work fine.
I'm currently following a guide to "recalibrate the battery" by charging it at 100% for 2 hours, using it until it hits 0, wait 5 hours, and charge it back up to full. I'm not sure if this process works but I don't have the equipment like a thermal-imaging camera to really do more invasive work. If the problem persists, I will let y'all know.
To Northridge:
When I reset the SMC, I get the normal green light and back to orange light. I did not take out the motherboard and test the voltage rails myself because I don't really know where to start. I do have a multimeter, iFixit toolkit, a soldering iron, and cleaning supplies. I'm pretty new to fixing stuff so I don't know much about troubleshooting the Macbook logic board outside the case.
Hello again. after "recalibrating" the new battery by charging it at 100% for 2 hours; using it until it shuts off at 0%; wait 5 hours; and charge back up to full, it appears that the MacBook air is working well at low battery percentages. Today, I shut off the MacBook air at 6% charge and after an hour, I reopened it and it sprang to life at 3% instead of showing the low battery indicator.
It was a 7ish hour process to recalibrate but it appears to fix all my issues! I hope this information proves helpful to anyone else!