sorry to hijack this thread - some people have asked me about the clickwheel mod .. here's the how-to
1) remove the 4 rear clickwheel screws, and disassemble as much as you can without pulling apart any glued components ... put both black and white glued-together clickwheel assemblies in a small container of methylated spirits for 1/2 an hour ... isopropyl alcohol would also probably work ... this will loosen the glue used to attach the plastics to the circuit board which tracks the finger movements
2) the black plastic outer has some protruding tabs on its underside which i removed with a sharp blade, they were used to align the plastic with the finger-track circuit board
3) from memory, i think i used a hand held spherical-looking grindstone to remove some material around the inside hole of the underside of the black plastic clickwheel .... do by hand, not with a machine, and slowly; i think i recall also using a flat blade around the inner bottom of the black clickwheel which stops the button rotating, as that portion interfered with the mini's finger-track circuit board
4) the inner clickwheel button also needs trimming with a small file, removing the 4 anti-rotation tabs on its circumference, and i think i sanded both it's bottom surface and circurmference; 5th gen are flat plastic, 6th gen are dished aluminium
5) removing the tabs as in #4 will cause the inner button to be able to rotate, so get the white button, sand the domed top surface off until it is quite thin, and glue that to the underside of the 'black' button, the tabs on the underside of the old white button will then locate into the mini assembly
6) everything needs to be fitted so the centre push button works correctly, but without any slop; so take your time, it is easy to remove too much plastic, too quickly ... put some tape over the clickwheel when re-inserting into the case, to stop it being scratched if the black click wheel is affixed to the finger-track circuit board, or better still, cut up a square of thin flat plastic sheet (like you find on a plastic blister pack), a bit bigger than the click wheel a put it above the clickwheel plastic, and slide it out after inserting the assembly into the case
7) you can get some special ipod clickwheel 3M adhesive pads from ebay to affix the black plastic to the finger wheel circuit board which is what i did, but double sided tape or easily dissolvable glue would work as well ... don't use water based glue ... take your time getting the alignment correct; the 3M pads only give you one chance
8) painting the white plastic end caps requires vinyl paint, like you get in an auto-parts store for car upholstery ** ... i used a mini-airbrush to apply it, but spraying straight from the aerosol can would probably work too ... don't worry if it looks like you applied too much paint ... just let it dry ... vinyl paint is very forgiving in its application, and is great for other plastic types as well, and is the only thing that will stick to PVC plastic, and remain scratch resistant .. the high level of strong solvent in the vinyl paint melts the surface of the plastic, etching it, for a good bond ... enamel paint will not stick well and can create a thick layer which can interfere with the tight tolerances apple uses... clean the white end caps with methylated spirits or isopropoyl alcohol before painting
**
vhtpaint.com/specialty/vht-vinyl-dye
duplicolor.com/product/vinyl-and-fabric-coating
plastikote.com/products/Specialty/Vinyl-Paint.html
I went thru the drama of painting pvc, and auto/car upholstery paint was the best and most scratch resistant I found ... the black is mainly carbon black and MEK (methyl ethyl ketone) and butane propellant... MEK is a very strong and nasty solvent, and also the most active ingredient of pvc pipe primer ... it will "melt" the top layer of pvc allowing the pigment to bond. It is also great for acyrlic (perspex) and ABS plastics, and doesn't really effect dimensional tolerances
9) to remove the endcaps without damage, i drop one or two blobs of hot melt glue onto them (without the hot melt gun metal tip touching and hence melting the end cap), and press a cable tie into the hot glue, when the glue is cold and hard, pull on the cable tie to remove the endcap, then remove the glue by twisting the cable tie, and any remaining glue with your fingernail
10) black clickwheel and silver button looks good on a silver case, you can get brand new, cases on ebay .. they dont have the apple branding, disksize logo or other text, as those are probably laser-ed on after anodizing, and the text can come in different languages, it will make you mini look like a macbook .... re-anodizing is quite an involved process, you need sulphuric/sulfuric (car battery) acid, a controllable powersupply, and optionally, some water soluble pigment dye ; strip old anodizing with phosphoric acid which you can find as clear-as-water 'rust remover' at a hardware store -- it can take a day or two if the concentration you are using is like 33% ... chroming requires the stripped and polished case to be 'zincated' for the underlying copper plating to adhere to the aluminium
11) there are spare clickwheel assemblies on ebay
12) the backlight mod will only work on one of the two types of display the gen2-MINI used, the moddable ones are marked "made in thailand" ... i haven't tried modding a gen1 display
other related threads
http://forums.ilounge.com/ipod-classic-legacy-ipods/281039-mini-projects.html
http://www.head-fi.org/t/566780/official-ipod-video-classic-5g-5-5g-6g-6-5g-7g-ssd-mod-thread/6390