Chosen Solution
The front right USB-C port on my MacBook Pro with Touch Bar 13” (2018) doesn’t work. Never has. It doesn’t charge, it doesn’t recognize devices, etc. What would a repair of this one USB-C (Thunderbolt, etc.) port likely entail? Will the entire logic board or will they just be able to replace a single small part in the store? I’m NOT eager to have to mail this off and/or have major guts from a brand new Mac replaced. Maybe it’s just a loose connection or something, or maybe it’s a bad port. Either way, I’m curious what folks here think. I looked at the tear-down, but couldn’t tell much. Any help here is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
The 2018 teardown does gloss over some of the details as Apple is basing the updated system on the older 2016 model. So if you look at the 2016 teardown you’ll see the USB-C port assembly is removable!
And heres a better view of the connector assembly being removed from the case
So, yes you can replace either one as needed. But there is still a wrinkle here! What if the connector is not the issue but the logic on the logic board which would require a new logic board. While not obvious each pair of ports has its own Intel JHL6540 Thunderbolt 3 controller. As this is still under warranty I would strongly recommend you get it to Apple or one of their authorized service centers. But, before you do I would make a good backup of my stuff and if you have anything personal on your system wipe the drive down so if they change out the logic board nothing personal would be exposed.
Too late for this case, but for anybody else having this issue: resetting the SMC (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295) brought my MBP’s “dead” USB-C port back to life.
