Funny question, but I can’t find a clear answer in the manual. Is it a bad idea to manually close the tailgate, or manually lower/raise the inner tail gate?

 

I haven't seen any ill effects but I don't know why you would want to do either on a regular basis.
It's really easy to just press the button to open or close the inner tailgate and it's a lot of effort to manually close the tailgate instead of using the proper button.

 

Thanks, and I completely agree. For whatever reason my wife and MIL aren’t bothering with the buttons when they use the Discovery. We were having a little debate over whether it could harm the mechanics of the automated gates. Manual doesn’t confirm either way really.

 

I would guess it's totally fine from time to time since the height adjustment of the outer gate is done by manually moving it.
I just noticed the vertical gap going down the left side of the gate when closed is a bit wider than the right side, and I'm not sure if the gate is adjustable as my OCD started kicking in!

 

haha this is the sort of thing I will be examining closely later… have to repeat my mantra, “it is a rugged 4x4… it is a rugged 4x4… it is a rugged 4x4”

 

You must have been doing your research! It must have been in review somewhere as it's not in these forums however when I was researching to buy also, recall reading the inner tail gate had an issue that needed repair. To this day I treat the hatch with complete negligence (manually open, manually close, driver button, remote, kick the fender, in tight quarters or with bike racks stop it from scratching) however baby the inner tail gate opening / closing and not wedging things against it. I loved the two part door in our trusty old LR3, this inner thing is just wonk.

And fellow TDer, what's diesel in NJ right now? It was $2.54 in Seattle two weekends back. Not complaining given the alternative but wow.

 

Totally agree re: the inner gate, it doesn't feel as utilitarian as it should. Poor design. I bet they bring the split gate back w/ the next gen!

Good lord, I wish it was $2.54. I'm north/central NJ just 15 miles from NYC. I paid $4.99 per gallon over the weekend which was the best that I have seen locally. The nearest station to us had it priced at $5.50 last I looked (about a week ago). Madness.

 

Apologies I meant $4.50. I spend time in Canada & US so always getting UOM wrong

Hold onto that TD, collectors items now!

 

I feel like it would have eventual bad effects on the electric mechanism. That is just my personal opinion though.

 

Here that would be $6.96 per gallon, thank goodness the price is going down, unfortunately our electric rates are up at about $0.18 per Gigajoule so I won't be trading my LR3 in for an electric horse quite yet!