The Sequoia wasn’t in bad shape when I picked it up, but it did have a few issues and a few half ass car dealership type repairs going on that needed to be addressed. I needed to get to it sooner than later, but my hand was forced when the rear tail gate stopped opening rather abruptly.
Zip Ties, is there anything they can’t do? Yes! Fix a broken cable in the back of a Sequoia! Amateur hour repair at it finest. I rigged the back to keep it working a bit longer and order some new parts off line. Apparently the handle on these SUV’s is plastic and prone to breaking so I had Jamie order the “all metal” handle off of Amazon. Spoiler alert it still has a lot of cheap plastic in it.
Okay I didn’t do a full step by step of this, but here’s how this works. When the gate is locked closed, empty out the hatch as best you can from the rear doors, and through the window that still rolls down. (hopefully). You can remove the plastic piece once you unbolt the pull strap. The roll the rear window almost all the way up. Leave about a 1 inch gap in it. Unbolt the the black metal panel and unbolt the rear window motor and that 1 inch gap should allow you to move the motor around enough to gain good enough access to see where your assembly failed and figure out how to get the hatch open.
The one single lonely bolt that Toyota had put in charge of holding the license plate surround on to the back of the Sequoia had been broken off in the previous Zip-Tie-Palooza repair. I acetoned the area and attacked it with some JB Weld. I would have rather used my go to Devcon Plastic Weld, but I was out and this was the best thing I had on hand. Fingers Crossed.
With the hatch working again I turned my attention to some of the basic maintenance that also needed to be caught up. At least this stuff is pretty easy and straight forward.
Should be a good head start for round 2.
