Has anyone with an electric tailgate ever driven with it opened slightly?

I need to collect an 8 foot long worktop so it will hang out the back.

I’ll ratchet strap the boot lid down but don’t want to damage the mechanism.

Will it disable itself when it cant fully close?

Think I would invest in a cheap set of roof bars.

Having had many Skoda’s over the years all with rails, the bars have come in handy, even if rarely used.

The trouble is I have a ladder rack and a bike rack set up from Yetis but the rails on Karoq are too small to use them without adding in some dubious rubber packings into the clamps!

You can set the tailgate to only open to a certain point (rather than fully) but to do that you'd need to know what point you want it to go to and you can't find that out until you have the worktop onboard. But in any event, I personally wouldn't be ratchet strapping the tailgate down as it would put undue pressure on the opening/closing components (pulling the tailgate closed when the electronics are not triggering the open/close mechanism) and could damage them resulting in an expensive bill. The joys of electric tailgates!

Be careful driving with the tailgate open, exhaust fumes will probably be sucked into the car!

Had a Ford Falcon estate in Australia with a wind down tailgate window and soon found out.

I did this with my Superb hatch when I needed some fencing. The boards hung out the back so I put a rolled up blanket on top of them and closed the tailgate. As it touched the blanket I pressed the button on the tailgate and it stopped it closing and kept it in that position. Took my time on the drive home. Tailgate worked fine when I got home and no problems since but to be fair it wasn't a great distance that I travelled. 

Even the Owners Manual (page 65) is not that clear about manual closing  

 

"Close manually

Close the door slowly, push down the lid, push in the lock on the centre of the

edge, above the ŠKODA logo"

 

Manual is here:  https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1303555/Skoda-Karoq-2017.html?page=64#manual

 

tom

 

 

I finally got around to picking this up. A 3x8 foot breakfast bar left about 2 foot hanging out the back.

I put a folded up towel underneath the boot lid and pressed the button to stop it when it rested on it.

The boot lid was bouncing up and down a little bit but it was only 4 miles home.

If I do it again I’ll make sure to wedge something under the boot lid so its held nice and solid.