I Finally Fixed my Hatch

The trunk/hatch on my car has been out of order for awhile now. I can't remember the exact date, but it's been a few months. Ever since we were at Brenda's place in Whitby for dinner. When we were leaving I tried to get into the trunk of my car, but it wouldn't open. I'm not sure what was wrong, but it didn't seem like the latch was releasing.

Every now and then I would take a look at it trying to figure out what was wrong. I thought I would try and take off the moulded felt covering over the inside of the hatch to see if I could find the problem. Unfortunately I never discovered how to do that.

I considered taking it to a mechanic, but I assumed it would cost a lot of money. Those guys aren't cheap as I'm sure you know. That would be a last resort.

Initially I wasn't in a big hurry to fix it. Though it was inconvenient it wasn't really necessary for me to access the back. For me, the only time I would really need to use the trunk would be in the summer if I needed to transport my bike (or anyone else's for that matter).

Now that the end of April was upon us I figured I'd better take a serious look at it again. After work on Easter Monday I returned home and started poking away at things. I lowered both back seats so I'd have more room to fit in the back and looked for any way to access the inside of the back of the hatch door.

Like I mentioned, the moulded covering on the inside of the hatch was too tight to pull off. I saw a couple of plastic tabs that I could pull off on both sides of the bottom of the edge of the hatch. But they were just the anchors for child seats.

There was a small (1.5"x1.5") plastic square piece in the middle of the hatch door. I yanked at it a couple of times, but it didn't come off. I went back outside the car and yanked on the hatch a few times and squeezed the release latch again (for the umpteenth time) with no success.

Again I went back inside and pulled at the plastic square piece. This time much harder until it finally came off. Now I actually had access to the inner workings of the door, so I stuck my finger in and felt around.

After fiddling around for a little while I found one piece that moved back and forth. I clicked it a few times and then went back outside to try the release latch. No luck. I went back in and pushed it the other way. No luck, again. So I used my key fob to lock and unlock the doors and tried the latch again - Success!!!!

I locked the trunk and tried again. It wouldn't open. So I fiddled around with the piece inside (this time with the hatch open so I wouldn't have to crawl in and out of the car again and again). I figured out that if you pushed the piece towards the driver's side it locked the latch and if you pushed it towards the passenger side you unlocked it.

I opened and closed the hatch a few more times and it seems to consistently work. I'm certainly happy about that. Boy... what a hassle.