Hey Guys,

I seem to be having two tailgate issues. I dont think they're related (or are they?).

Issue #1
Video 1 / Video 2
My upper tail gate has always been a little hard to close. I've always had to kind of slam it with my hand right where the tailgate latch is. Sometimes it needs so much force, my partner has trouble closing it. If we dont use force, it just kind of stays half locked, like the latching mechanism is locked halfway, but not fully and the car says the tailgate is open and it rattles a bit while driving. I didn't think much of at first, but I had second thoughts after seeing videos online where people just kind of drop the upper tailgate down and it locks without force. I inspected the upper tail gate latch upper and lower pieces. Upper piece (not sure what it's called, maybe striker?) looks to be fine, no misalignment, no weird marks from misaligned latch). I inspected the latch, and it doesn't seem to be misaligned or out of place or damaged. I do see that it's dirty, It seems to be stiff, like someone put some kind of grease in there (the kind of lubricant that looks like lard for lack of a better word). I cleaned it up a bit with some degreaser, and I'm going to get some silicon lubricant for it today. I dont know if this is just a bad/old latch that needs to be replaced, or it's just cruddy and needs to be cleaned up.

Issue #2
Video 1 / Video 2
The upper tail gate latch stopped releasing the other day. I thought it was the normal actuator cable fix that it needed. I got into the Lower gate to inspect the actuator and it's already been replaced (I'm not sure if just the cable and tailgate latch have been replaced or the actuator as well), but it had the new "L" type cable. So I hooked the electronics back up and it seems like when I push the upper tail gate button, the actuator works but it doesn't fully retract the cable to open the latch. Again, there was some weird yellow lubricant on the plastic parts (inside the spring), so cleaned that off, but it didn't make much difference. I did notice that if I pressed the upper tailgate button a few times, each time, the actuator would respond less and less, to the point of the 4th or 5th press, where it didn't respond at all, like it needs to recharge. and after a minute or two, I would try again and it would do the same thing. Every once in a while, the actuator would have enough charge to pull the cable taught enough to unlock the upper latch. If I had to guess, I'd say the actuator is dying/dead and needs replacement.

I've been thinking about getting the full actuator, latch and water spread kit from Roverparts to solve both problems.

Any advice would be great. thanks in advance.

 

Anyone anyone? Bueller. Bueller.

 

Replace the latch with genuine updated L cable and actuator with a genuine unit, that should solve it.

LRdirect in the UK has great prices on genuine parts.

Ive had issues with some of the cheaper aftermarket brands.

 

When did they update that L-cable?