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Pink Airport

Written by Christian

Friday, 18 March 2005

This mod is a pink paint mod for an Apple Airport. What can I say? My girlfriend’s birthday was last week and this was my present to her. Why did I paint an airport pink? Well, she just bought an iBook (her first Mac) and she wants to be able to serve the net while lays down in her dorm room bed. She loves pink, and since she couldn’t buy her iBook in Pink, so this will have to do for a while.

Taking apart an Airport is faily simple so I didn't go into those details here. Just look for the screws and remove them

. If you want some more info on take-apart and removal of paint on an airport, check out these two great mod guides 1)Clear ABS & 2) Colin's Clear Airport.

There is a wire you need to disconnect from the ceramic compartment. I didn't know about it, and ended up almost messing it up badly. Don't forget this key fact
Their are six screws altogether. Don't be afraid to unscrew the tight ones, it'll be OK
Use rubbing alcohol from the drugstore. I tried other solvents and they plain did not work!
The part with the ports has some THICK paint. You'll need to leave it in the solvent for about 3 times as long as the other pieces.

Be sure to use 70% rubbing alcohol from your local drug store. You can try other solvents like I did, and hopefully you’d find something that will work, but I didn’t. Another important detail to the mod is the number of screws you must remove. There are 6 and the last two are REALLY tight, but don’t be afraid, you won’t break it.

When stripping the paint you will become very frustrated with the port piece. The paint is a lot thicker on this piece for some reason, so be patient and let it soak in the solvent for a few more hours. It’s oddly shaped, so to prevent dipping the electronics in solvent you’ll need to be creative with tape to hold the electronics up out of the solvent.

On to painting! Well… not quite. You need to prep first. I used blue painters tape and I was really surprised by the amount of tape I needed to use. Just be sure to put a little bit of tape over where the service lights shine through the cone piece and put tape over the screw holes in the cone piece so you can screw it all back together.

Now on to painting! I picked enamel paint because it’s designed to be used on plastic. I didn’t consider heat resistant paint because my airport has never gotten really hot over time. I double coated the spray paint. When putting the airport back together, don’t be afraid to tighten those last two screws really tightly, or the airport will squeak. When putting the bottom piece on the airport, be aware that it’s a tight fit. I wouldn’t try to take the bottom piece off and back on more than is needed.

This mod cost be about $40 but it shouldn't cost more than $30 if you don't experiment with other solvents like I did.

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