Hey there,

The other day I opened the tailgate and heard a pop. I looked but couldn't see anything so carried on, figured it was dirt stuck or something. Yesterday we opened it and the passenger side strut popped off. It's still attached to the vehicle, but not the tailgate. I tried to pop the strut back onto the ball part on the tailgate, but I feel like I'd have to really force it. The strut is fully extended, I can't push it in (compress it) to get it attached.

Is this a common issue? I searched Google, but couldn't find anything like this. Suggestions to fix it myself?

Thanks for the help!

 

Anyone? Our hatch is essentially useless, and I can't find any info on Google about it.

Thanks

 

Pictures are worth a thousand words

 

These systems do fail at some point as it is a moving part. Did a quick search and found this;

https://repairpal.com/estimator/acur...placement-cost

 

buy new hydraulic arm and install in place of the old one

 

Thanks everyone. I called some dealers today, backordered everywhere and it's a $500 part. So I compared the right side to the left, and it really liked like it should just pop back on so I used a little force and it went back on. Not sure how long it'll last, but it seems to be working again so it's now a potential problem for another day lol.

 

Replace with OEM struts only. I had this issue with my 4Runner. I replaced with 3rd party struts which wasn't rated for the heft of the liftgate. It eventually failed again and caused a huge dent in the sheet metal near the mount point when it collapsed. Nearly killed my poor mother. Those lift gate can weight several hundred pounds coming down hard on someone's head can kill them.

 

Picture please.