Gateway 7000 series display problem, hinges?

I've had some success maintaining my own desktop
computers. But I've never before attempted fixing a laptop.
So I had a professional work on it. But the results were not
as expected. Now I thought I'd take a whack at it myself.

I'm trying to fix a problem with a Gateway 7000 series laptop.
It's refurbished and no longer under any sort of warranty.

It developed an odd problem where the display panel
is virtually powered down when the machine is powered on.
As the lid is tilted on it's hinges the display can blink on
briefly, and inconsistently. There doesn't appear to be
any position that's reasonable for use where the display is
powered up normally.

I disconnected the display from the base and seemingly
discovered that when I rotate the right display hinge, the
display goes on and off, seemingly depending on the position
of the hinge, as though there is a switch built into the hinge.

The right hinge appeared to have been rotated too
far when it was previously assembled. When I rotated it
to where I thought it should be, I could rotate it back and forth in
a manner that I thought would approximate the motion of opening
and closing the lid normally. The display appeared to turn off when
the hinge was in a position corresponding to the lid being almost
closed, which is what I'd expect. I thought I had the problem solved.

But when I reassembled the laptop the problem remained without
much change. The hinges now appear to be positioned as they should
be.

Apparently there's more to it. I am wondering if there's a switch
in the other hinge as well, but haven't really been able to determine
that. I don't want to go too far without enough knowledge because I
might break something.

Although I'd naturally prefer to find an answer without spending a
lot of money, I haven't even been able to find an applicable service
manual at any price.

I've come across places that appears to have service manuals for some
Gateway models for sale for a few dollars, but not for the 7000 series.

I've considered trying to determine if information on some other Gateway
series might apply to the 7000 series, but haven't had much luck. The
information on the Gateway site doesn't appear to be consistent
across models. For example, they have a high level list of
component numbers, disk drive, motherboard, etc. for the
7000 series. But for the 6000 series they don't even list the
motherboard. It's hard to determine what's comparable.

Does anyone have any knowledge/experience of this sort of thing,
or any ideas for a direction for an inexpensive solution?