[Cootey]

I repaired my daughter’s Kobo Clara HD yesterday. I had only intended to upgrade the microSD card, but after reassembling it, the charging port was no longer in alignment.

It turns out that the Clara HD shipped defective from the factory years ago. The plastic strut on the case above the opening that helps secure the microUSB charging port was bent into the port during assembly! This wasn’t something that could have happened by user roughness. Whatever tension that kept the charging port in alignment from the factory was released when I pulled off the cover. The jack on the motherboard moved 2mm out of alignment and no longer allowed a connection.

I had to disassemble the entire Clara HD and remove the motherboard to straighten the curved at the motherboard’s edge (bent from assembly stress from this factory error) and use pliers to reshape the strut and the opening on the case. Then I reassembled the Clara HD with the securing plastic strut outside of the port as it should have been. All fixed.

I spent hours looking for teardowns of the Kobo Clara HD that would show me what the port was supposed to look like. If they existed, they didn’t come up in my search. I couldn’t find any tutorials that would tell me in which order I should disable the ribbon cables that were connected to the motherboard, or if there were any tricky parts to look out for. I did it all blind.

Fortunately, I have some experience with these things, so I figured it out. But as I was struggling in the beginning to find a DIY repair resource, I wished Kobo already had repairability articles for the Clara HD.

I’m glad Kobo is finally coming out with a repairability page, even if it’s just for the newer models. At this time iFixit’s website is short on tutorials for the Kobo. Their entry for the Forma is just a placeholder. It’s all community driven, like a wiki. I wonder what Kobo will contribute.