Replacing the Keyboard on a Lenovo Ideapad Flex-4 1470

Published by John on April 18, 2018 Under Computer Repair

Recently, someone called me up after spilling some water on the keyboard of their Lenovo Flex 4 Ideapad. They had let it dry(See Disclaimer Above!) and afterwards some of the keys were no longer working, so they gave me a call.

I did a quick inspection of it and pulled the parts list for the laptop, but a part number for an individual keyboard was not listed. Instead, the entire palmrest, which includes the keyboard, trackpad, and plastic top cover, appeared to be a single part(#AM1JE00100.) I checked online and found that while most people were selling the entire palmrest as a single piece, there were a couple people selling an individual keyboard, as well as one person selling a palmrest without a keyboard, for significantly less than the cost of the entire palmrest.

Usually, I would of preformed a full diagnostic on the laptop to inspect it and then determined if I could actually replace just the keyboard in order to save the client some money. Sometimes, even though the laptop manufacturer doesn’t expressly list the part individually, you can still replace it and save a few bucks.

However, my client needed to keep their laptop for work and so could not leave it with me long enough for me to check it out. So, I reviewed the parts list again, a service manual for the laptop, which had an FRU for the Upper Case, but not the keyboard, and also some pictures from people selling the Palmrest on ebay.

In the end, I erred on the side of safety and we went ahead and ordered the entire palmrest, which was considerably more expensive, but from my research it looked like the keyboard might not be easily replaceable on its own.

This ended up being a good idea for two reasons:

1) Most importantly, there does not appear to be an easy way to remove just the keyboard without risking damage to the palmrest. It is held in place by a piece of metal, which is secured using probably 50-100 small plastic knobs. Removing this piece of metal without damaging the case/laptop and then reliably securing it back in place is unlikely and/or would be incredibly time consuming.

2) Also, there is some plastic in place which helps protect from spills and in this case, may have helped keep the water from seeping through. As with the above, the chance of removing this and then reliably securing it without damage is unlikely.

So, if you have a bad keyboard on a Flex 4 1470, or similar models such as the 1480, 1580, 1435, or 1570, or another palm rest related issue, don’t get lured into people selling a cheap keyboard and/or palmrest without a keyboard. You should go ahead and bite the(much more expensive) bullet and replace the entire upper case assembly. In this case, we were able to find a used palmrest/keyboard for a decent price.

While it may be possible to save a few bucks and replace just the keyboard, the chance of removing it without damaging the upper case is unlikely and would be very time consuming to do right. Most likely, you would be stuck gluing it or otherwise doing some sort of hacky repair to ensure that the plate that holds the keyboard in place is secure and water resistant.

The exception to that is the trackpad itself. The trackpad is held in place by two screws in the back of the palm rest. After removing those screws, the trackpad can be lifted from the front of the laptop and replaced individually.

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