Hey guys, I think there may be a screw missing in the assembly of my rear gate latch because you can pull it straight off while trying to open the rear gate if you pull too hard. Either that or some cheap pressure latches are the only thing that hold it together and they are worn, can you guys shine a light on how it's supposed to work? I can take a picture if it helps. Thanks!

 

Nope not a screw. There are 6 or so plastic studs. That snap off. Its crappy engineering. Mine has broken several times. You will have to pull the intetior panel off to fix it. But it will just break again. The best advice i can give you is to just pull the tray back away from the panel. Clean all the old adhesive off. Then reapply a good quality adhesive and put some bar clamps to keep preasure while it cures.

This is the most important part ( even if you go by a new one and fix it properly).

Never let anyone but you open or close the gate.

When you open the gate use two hands. One for the lever and the other to grab the bottom of the gate. Also use the thumb of the lifting handle to press against the tray while pulling the lever. Always lift by the gate not the handle. When closing the gate guide it down until about 4" from close the push it shut firmly but never let it slam shut. Thats i do and my last repair lasted for years until this summer when my buddy accidentally slammed the gate.

To fix it properly i have thought about running two pieces of flat bar in an x formation with rubber around the ends of the flat bar. Then screwing through the tray and use adhesive around the edges. Not sure if the real estate will allow for the flat bar. In the x formation but it would spread the load well and i think you could hide most of the screws behind the license plate.

 

Great idea, since you need the help... or you can drive to me so I can take a look at it.

 

I think there are some stupidly expensive aftermarket that were made for a while but they are/were far more expensive than the atrociously expensive original part. The handle itself seems fine. It's the entire plastic panel that is the big issue. I've added stainless lag bolts to mine which helped a lot but now the stupid thing is cracking around the right end of the handle part now on mine. One day I'll pull the stupid thing off again.

 

That's what I was afraid of. Okay I'll do the glue trick thanks for the reply!

 

I saw others just drill thru and bolt directly. I used hex bolts and place rubber washers between the plate and metal to absorb the impact from the tail gate slamming shut



all the time.

 

Might be real helpful to others to get a photo further away, to see where exactly you put those bolts. Hard to tell from the photo. But job looks professional!

 

Ours broke off as well. I made sure this thing is not coming off. Probably one of the worse fixes but this thing is not going anywhere. Plastic clips on a 200lb plus rear door was a really bad design. And I wasn’t going to pay a ton for a new piece.

 

I swear the solution I see most with h2s is to throw old drywall screws in everything and call it a day

 

And drywall to replace the interior panels, painted to match?