The tailgate does not swing open. It will raise and lower the window and allow the tailgate to drop with the windows down. Any thoughts on where to start troubleshooting?
You need to elaborate. By "does not swing open," you mean you pull on the handle, quite forcefully even, and the door just does not budge, it's stuck? The tailgates have a number of moving parts, all greased with white lithium grease. Great stuff, but after 23 years it turns to clay. My tailgate got progressively harder to get open (swinging open, that is), and especially so in wintertime. It got quite stuck some days. Others have even broken their handles trying to get them open... The solution, if that is indeed your trouble, is to soak it quite thoroughly in wd-40 more than once, or liquid wrench, or pb blaster, your penetrating oil of choice, followed by a lubricating oil or fresh white lithium grease. Don't brake your handle. Best thing would be to open it, like you said, pickup truck style with the window down and the gate swung down. That way, you can get at the offending latch. No harm would be down to even pull the back plastic trim off and spray more lubricant from the inside out. You can't use too much penetrating oil. To pull the trim, just remove the center handle, comes off with a phillips; then a tool that looks like I remember a gardener's weed puller to look like, designed to grip around and pop out plastic trim panel retainers without too much damage. Go all the way around, there's one every foot depending, and the hole back comes off in 10 minutes. Then you can oil and grease the inside. A good oiling did wonders for mine; it does not stick at all anymore, and the tailgate lock actuator worked again! It just couldn't fight the stiff latch mechanism before.
This would be correct. I will give this a go and see report back my results.. I will feel kinda dumb if this works, as it is something I should've attempted (which I admittedly did'nt attempt)......
