Replacing the rear dial of a Panasonic GX7 camera

I've had Panasonic GX7 camera since around 2015. The rear dial, used for exposure compensation, stopped working properly some time back and I've wanted to get it fixed.

It looks like this and turns out to be possible but kind of finicky to replace:

You'll need

• The camera
• A replacement rear dial (part number K0RE00300029, I found one on AliExpress for $30, kinda steep but ok)
• A good PH000 screwdriver (one from an Ifixit kit works okay)
• Some kind of tool, maybe tweezers, to reseat ribbon cables (I didn't have one and that was not a good deal)
• The service manual

The service manual looks like this and it's great:

You have to jump down to Section 9 "Disassembly and Assembly Instructions", which has a handy flowchart making it clear that we'll need to disassemble in this order:

1. Rear Case Unit
2. Top Case Unit / Flash PCB
3. Rear Dial Unit

and then re-assemble in the opposite order.

The instructions are very clear and everything is pretty straightforward. However,

• the ribbon cables are difficult to re-seat, and
• some of the screws are stubborn and you'll need to be careful so you don't strip them.

So keep that in mind.

Here's what it looks like, step by step in photos, as a sort of supplement to the service manual.

Rear case unit mostly off:

Top case unit mostly off:

The old (left) and new (right) dials:

The top case unit after removing the old dial:

The new dial in place but not fastened:

All the screws and bits (the service manual assigns a letter to each type of screw):

The hard part is re-attaching the rear case ribbon cables to the main PCB. This took a while. Definitely get some well-suited tweezers or something for this. I'm not sure what people normally use for ribbon cables, but I'm certain it's not their fat fingers.

After a very tedious 15 minutes or so, I ended up taking off the "rear operation unit" to get some more freedom of motion on this ribbon.

It helped:

The final, fatter ribbon was left, but that was much easier:

I was relieved to see that everything works after I put the battery back in and turned it on. I can now underexpose my photos like I used to: