The S is Silent
12-25-2005, 03:49 PM
Hey guys. I know on a lot of the minivans, the back hatch has the tendancy to not close sometimes, and I just wanted to share what I found today. I wanted to put this here for anybody if they ever run into the problem and run a search :thumb:
The first thing to check is the latch pin. It's the part that the hatch actually grabs on. Sometimes, this gets pushed back and just needs to be re-aligned. Get a torx head driver and loosen it up. There should be a little bit of play in it. Pull it all the way towards you and tighten it up again. It'll move forward a good couple of millimeters, and hopefully that's enough to get your hatch to latch...if not, you need to move on to the next part....
The latch itself. You can either try to spray some PB blaster into the mechanism to get it to un-stick itself, or you can opt to pull it out like I did. Remove the handle from the hatch. Pop the pannel off, it's just held on by some metal clips. Now, the hatch latch (he he) is held in by two torx head screws on the bottom of the hatch. Take those out and get the latch mechanism out. Disconnect the wires and pull it out. More than likely, if it's like mine, it looks a little rusty and the moving parts don't want to move to much. I'll post pics once I get them off my camera. I fixed this by spraying liberally with PB blaster (or some other lubricant) until you can move everything easily, and the latch does what it's supposed to do.
Assembly is just the opposite of disassembly. There you go. Now your hatch latches correctly and you don't have to be that guy in the parking lot of the store continuously slamming your hatch to get it to close :thumb:
The first thing to check is the latch pin. It's the part that the hatch actually grabs on. Sometimes, this gets pushed back and just needs to be re-aligned. Get a torx head driver and loosen it up. There should be a little bit of play in it. Pull it all the way towards you and tighten it up again. It'll move forward a good couple of millimeters, and hopefully that's enough to get your hatch to latch...if not, you need to move on to the next part....
The latch itself. You can either try to spray some PB blaster into the mechanism to get it to un-stick itself, or you can opt to pull it out like I did. Remove the handle from the hatch. Pop the pannel off, it's just held on by some metal clips. Now, the hatch latch (he he) is held in by two torx head screws on the bottom of the hatch. Take those out and get the latch mechanism out. Disconnect the wires and pull it out. More than likely, if it's like mine, it looks a little rusty and the moving parts don't want to move to much. I'll post pics once I get them off my camera. I fixed this by spraying liberally with PB blaster (or some other lubricant) until you can move everything easily, and the latch does what it's supposed to do.
Assembly is just the opposite of disassembly. There you go. Now your hatch latches correctly and you don't have to be that guy in the parking lot of the store continuously slamming your hatch to get it to close :thumb: