How To: Change Your iPod Face Plate and Clickwheel and Bring It Back from the Dead

I’m not a huge fan of white everything, call me a traitor but when it comes to watching video on a portable device, I tend to find that a dark colored border helps me focus on the video. It’s a choice of preference and your mileage may vary. Well, I got a white iPod for Christmas and instead of being a jerk and asking to exchange it, I decided to change the faceplate. I waited until the time was right and got the scroll wheel cover, button, and face plate brand new for under 20 dollars. Here I will walk you through how to do all this and make sure you do as little harm to the iPod as possible.

Getting into the iPod:
Getting in is the hardest part but once you’ve mastered it this will be easy. Basically the iPod is two parts, the face plate which holds in all the guts and the backing which holds the battery, hold button, and headphone jack. There is very little space to get anything in to separate the two halves. You can always use a flat head screwdriver but you run the risk of scratching your iPod up. I recommend taking a napkin and holding it on the somewhat sharp end of a bread knife and using the opposite end to pry open the iPod. This may take some time and will be hard but once one side comes up, gently and slowly slide over to the next side and keep prying. You should hear some clicking sounds which are the clips detaching from the sides of the backing. Once separated, do not rip it out. The cables that connect the battery and hold switch/headphone jack to the logic board are taped to the backing and can be torn easily. Also there will be two small grey or blue bumpers (color depends on which size iPod you have) towards the dock connector at the end of the hard drive: save these.

Now that you have your iPod opened you will want to remove the face plate and scroll wheel or scroll wheel cover (I very highly recommend you get a complete replacement as this will save you so much time and trouble).

Changing the faceplate:
So now you have iPod guts all over and are ready to change your faceplate. If you’ve gotten this far, pat yourself on the back and now take 250 to 350 dollars from your wallet and set it aside. Open up the online Apple store and add an iPod video to your cart because dear reader, and in all caps, I CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ACTIONS. I even put this in bold so it might be the first thing you saw and so if you skipped around, scroll back up and read it in order. Now that that has been settled you will need only one more tool to get the screws out on every side. Chances are you don’t have it and neither did I, so I instead used a sharp knife with a pointed end and that was enough to get all 6 screws out. There are some clips and it does come off but this requires a bit more tugging.

Now for the good part. Ready your new scroll wheel cover and slowly but gently tug the original cover off the orange plastic circle and the metal backing. It will take a while but be sure to do it gently and don’t bend the metal backing of the scroll wheel; if you do bend it your scroll wheel will be crooked. Once off you may have to dab it with a bit of strong glue to stay on as most will come right off.

Now that you have your new scroll wheel cover your next step is to put the faceplate on. Getting it on and putting the screws back is easy, the hard part is making sure nothing gets trapped in between. To check, turn your iPod on and put it on the lowest brightness setting and remove any dirt, hair, or whatever, and then repeat with the highest brightness setting. Moving around in different lighting conditions is highly recommended.

iPod 911
So everything is going great until you turn your iPod on and the sad icon comes up. Chances are you’re going to ask for help in the comments (which I have no problem with) but you’re most likely not going to wait for a response.

If you get the sad iPod icon all hope is not lost. Hold down the Menu and select (center) buttons until you get to the screen with an Apple symbol. Right when the Apple symbol comes up, hold down select and play/pause until you get into Disk Mode. Disk Mode is to make sure nothing is wrong with your Hard Drive and if all is good a check mark symbol in black and white will appear, saying it’s okay to disconnect your iPod. To get out of this, reset the iPod by pressing menu and select.

If a folder with an exclamation point comes up this means the iPod cannot find the Hard Drive. If you can hear the Hard Drive spinning then there may be a problem with the cable connection and it may need to be reset.

For me, this process took a couple of hours as I had not done this before and was not prepared for the consequences. Learn from my mistakes when doing out of warranty things with your iPod. Once it’s opened your warranty is gone but if you’re careful in putting it back together you may still be able to retain it.