Hi all,

My tail gate states it is open on the dash. It is closed, however not fully, as there is some play in it. It is locked however, so when you press the unlock button the the tail gate it opens, and closes. However it no longer soft closes. The upper glass tail gate will not open at all, but I reckon this is because it detects the main tail gate being open.

I have tried holding the tail gate button for 12 seconds, while open. No difference. Also tried holding down lock/unlock buttons on dash, and all this has done is unlock the tail gate, which wasn't an issue anyway.

Any advice how to restore the soft close option and thus cure the dash warning of gate open

Thanks

Car is a 2007 RRS HSE

Had this on mine when i had my battery drain issue, it was the micro switch that had corroded which displayed tailgate open on dash but it wasn't open, try changing your upper tailgate switch, hope this helps

cheers - I actually had a spare upper tail gate switch from when I bought the car, best to be prepared and all that.

Anyway I pulled out the old one (little trick) but got it and changed over to the replacement. Tail gate still doesn't soft close, and upper glass portion will not open. Tailgate open warning still and car horn beeps when locking

Any other suggestions ? Is there a fuse for the softclose part, or is there anything else I could change ?

I've been having this exact issue. It *might* be to do with positioning of the receiving part. What I did the other day was to get a T40 torx, lift up the little plastic cover, undo the 2 bolts there a bit, pull the latch forward/towards you as much as it can go and then re-tighten the bolts. It worked fine to start with but stopped a couple of days later but it might be that I didn't do it tight enough, so will do it again & see what happens. I think I was on the right track though.

If it doesn't soft close (whirr, clunk) then its not closed and you'll get the message on the dash. The horn sounds when you try and set the alarm on the car and any door or tailgate or bonnet is not reading as closed. Upper tailgate will not open when lower tailgate is or thinks it is.

is there a fuse related to the soft close function ? as it seems the mechnical latch engages, but electrically its not fully closed enough to initate the soft close

Probably but I don't know where it is

I still don't know where the sensors are to have the soft close engage anyway. If I did, then it'd be easier to sort out.

Have you tried the trick of closing the boot and as it comes to second click pull back gently (but not by the upper tailgate release handle)? Sometimes that engages the soft close and it would be a way of telling whether or not it was working.

Have you tried adjusting yet? Its sunny today, so I'm going to check mine.

so I am more convinced now it is the upper tailgate causing the problem.

https://forums.lr4x4.com/topic/105552-brok...-vehicles/

The above links to a thread on a similiar issue, so I've decided to try and release open the upper tailgate, to make sure nothing is caught in the locks or that it at least shuts properly.

So popped out to the cars this morning, more so to play musical cars ( I have a small driveway ) I have also noticed my rear wiper is not working either, and this was definitely working the day previous. This all points to the upper tail gate being the problem. So hopefully at some stage today I will get it working

That is entirely your choice but I would recommend checking the lower latch in the boot to see if it has moved over time (quite possibly) and to try and adjust it. Just to re-iterate, your top tailgate will not open when the bottom one is not properly closed (ie fully motorised closed) so trying to "fix" your upper tailgate when that is the case is likely to a waste of your time.

Before you do it, try to gently close the whole tailgate click click and as you hear the second click, pull back with your hand on the upper tailgate release. There is a good chance that you will find yourself with both tailgates open (which is why I recommended not to hold onto the release in my last post!). If that happens, then you know its not the upper one that has a fault,

Going back to mine, I again adjusted my lower latch this morning and obviously didn't get it correct as whereas before it was working 3/5 (soft close motor engaging), it now wasn't at all. I then adjusted it again and it's working 100% of the time. It appears that the alignment is very important, so even just 0.5mm out of sync, which mine was about based on tightening marks, is enough to cause it to malfunction.

Its got to be easier trying to adjust than taking your whole tailgate to pieces!

so I got this sorted

and it was the striker/latch positioning. I was reluctant to touch it at first, as I've had exerpience adjusting latches like that on cars before, and its a pain. So I did investigate the top latch part, and was able to open the upper tailgate, per the linked guide. So good to know.

But none of that fixed it, so final shot was the latch adjustment. I took a real close look at it, and I could make out that they had certainly moved, so readjusted them and all is well again

Thanks for your advice ! much appreciated.

Glad its sorted