Bumpers on E6500??

I know I'm not the first to have this problem, but one of those crappy lid bumpers that sit on the outside of the speaker grills fell off. I asked Dell to send me a few new ones, since I figured I would have a hard time getting it glued back, at least without making a mess. They said the only way was to replace the whole palmrest...? Has anyone had any luck gluing these things back without them falling off again?

 

They are glued on in the first place so it must be possible to re-glue them. However, I don't know what sort of glue gets used. I would be tempted to try some super glue having fist roughened up the bottom of the bumper so that the glue has something to grip on.

John

 

A little tough to get anything in the "pocket" on the back side of the bumper to rough it up. They're not like a round, flat "dot" bumper. They're like a thin, rectangular cover for a small metal tab that's in the palm rest. When I try pushing it back in place, it pops back up as soon as I take my finger off it. I'm worried that if I glue it, the glue won't stick, and it will secretly fall off leaving the metal tab to trash the aluminum screen bezel in the lid.

 

Dell uses a plastic weld method to fuse the bumpers to the palmrest so yes you would have to get the whole palmrest replaced.

 

The alternative is to forego Dell's bumpers and put some of these on the display bezel. I put some on the top bezel of my E6400's display (I had to trim them to about 1mm thickness) and they are almost invisible. You could put one at each top corner, one near the latch and one half way down each side and you will be better equipped than when the computer left the factory.

John

 

Yup, I got my palm rest replaced twice because of falling pads.
The pad story with the Latitude E is it's down side. But I don't care, as I have a tech coming over every time.

I don't dare to use super glue, as my experience suggest, it creates a gas when it reacts and leaves marks around. Maybe my super glue brand sucks... I used the brand Krazy glue. So I don't know. If you have next buisness day on site technician, then just replace the palm rest.

The pads on the palm rest are not welded like the feet. It's just stupid glue.

 

I never posted how it all worked out. Well, thank god for Pro Support! The guy was nice, arrived on time, and basically had to tear down the entire case to get the palm rest off. In all it took him about 20 minutes, working very quickly. Hope Dell designed the bumpers more thoughtfully on the E6510.

 

I wonder if you could plop on a dab of black silcone sealant (aquarium grade), cover with wax paper, gently close the lid (almost closed) until it dried, and then peel off the wax paper to leave a custom bumper?

My trouble has been the bottom rubber pads on the E6400. I removed them all and applied four Shepherd Hardware 3/4" round clear Vinyl adheasive pads from Home Depot. They are soft and grippy, so no slide.

GK

 

Sounds like a decent soultion for the bottom pads. The screen bumpers are basically some type of synthetic rubber covering a metal tab. I didn't think I would be able to get the bumper that fell off to reliably stay reglued, and if it were to fall off again while being transported, I think the metal tab would eat the screen bezel - ugly! Paid for Pro Support so figured might as well use it. Just seemed like an awful lot of work to replace a bumper...not great engineering by Dell as I'm sure an easily replaceable flat bumper in a recessed round depression in the palm rest would work just as well and simple for anyone to replace. BTW, while I use this laptop daily (not heavily though), it rarely gets moved or screen closed. Suprised it fell off.