Hey all. Did this replacement and ... dang it. Must be the mobo or other. Do any of you know how, given that the HD is literally built into the mobo, possibly to recover data from one of these? Am I assessing whether to ship this OnTrack or other service at this point? There's no actual component or connector so... <whomp whomp> sassafrassa!

THIS ONE HERE (lolz)

Yes via OWC (MacSales) or maybe here at iFixit, you CAN upgrade the HD, but the RAM is soldered on-board.

KEEP your Apple HD in case you ever have to get Apple to repair it. They SUCK about have 3rd party components in their systems and will want to REPLACE it for $$$

I also wanted to add that the MBP 2017 Fn keys that I bought was a refurbished unit. The battery was never great.

I wanted to share the process that got me to just replace the durned battery already….

— After the original battery degraded enough, I got to a point were I basically had to keep it on power, then… a further issue where the SSD was not recognized on boot. Somehow I voo-doo’d my way through with SMC and PRAM resets. Literally 5-10 boots if lucky to get the unit to recognize the SSD and boot off of it. This was cause for concern, of course, but I’m an I.T. Consultant and this ain’t my first rodeo.

— I got to a place where I took it to the “Genius” Bar. They ran diags, and were decent…, but/and made comments about if this, and maybe that, and your hard drive…. Quoting between $500-1K. Nahhh. Basically I knew none of this had been happening before battery degradation. I’ve just done the work, Machine booted, and then I tried a reboot immediately. Good to go! Now on it’s 100% + 2hr charge.

Ditto to all of this.

There is no real mention of how to disconnect the battery board data cable connector.

— There’s a step about removing the cable from the main board, right by the larger “Pancake screw”, but only a passing reference to an even smaller connector, so the cable can be re-used, as it does.

THE BATTERY BOARD connector, as @dhinderman stated, is quite tiny. I found that if I used the angled tweezers to grab the cable close to the connector and pushed the flat lead into the slot, I then could use the flat end of the black “pick” tool to push the miniscule locking hasp back (away from the cable) and click-lock it flush to the board.

THE MAIN BOARD connector is 25% bigger, and was part of the original disassembly instructions. In fact it was those instructions that helped me understand how to work with the battery-board connectior.

I’d ADD, as a clear instruction step, that this critical, skinny flat cable, needs to be removed from the battery board, and how to do it.

I tried (“Operation”!) to remove this water damage indicator sticker elegantly. Ended up hacking it apart. I think I’ll live.