Hoping someone can help me with this. Basically today I went to open the tailgate and nothing happened when I pressed the button. Absolutely nothing, no click/whirring or anything. I'm talking about the main tailgate here, the big metal one and not the glass one which still works fine thankfully.

Don't really know where to start looking - there's nowhere to insert my key to override it. Is there a way to manually open the tailgate? Appreciate any tips!

Its a 2005 Sport 4.2.

Thanks

Press and hold both unlock and lock buttons on the Center dash for 5 seconds.

If this doesn’t release the tail gate.

1 ensure it is fully closed. It won’t release if part open. Force it shut.
2 you will need to remove the trim from the inside of the tailgate and check the motor and wiring to it

Never knew you could open the tailgate like that but it worked so massive thank you for that.

Button on the tailgate still unresponsive though - assume it needs replacing if everything else is working ok without it?

Is it easy to do ?

Yeah it’s easy to change the button.

Done from the inside.

All sorted now thanks. For the benefit of anyone else finding this in the future the issue was that the spring inside the button had rusted away was preventing the button from being pushed in fully to make the electrical contact.



Tailgate trim removed.


You can see evidence of the corrosion already on the bottom of the button.


Rusted spring.


All that crud was stopping the button from moving.


Brand new spring and O-ring

There's a chap selling replacement spring kits including an an O-ring for £11.99 on eBay. Pretty easy job once the trim was removed. There was no trace of the O-ring left on my button so I assume it must have perished and that's how the water was getting in causing it to rust. The new spring is stainless steel so will probably outlast the rest of the car now