Sign of my car's age I suppose (passed the nine year mark) as following many years of fault free ownership the problems are beginning to start.

 

Two or three weeks ago I had an occasional problem of the tailgate catch not releasing so it was a case of crawling over the back seats to use the manual release. It would then be fine for a couple of days. Then a week or so ago when it did unlock on the key as I lifted the tailgate as it opened about 6" I heard a short and slight electrical buzz; perhaps it always did this and I never noticed but once things start to go wrong I get neurotic about noises. It now seems to have failed completely and if I want to get into the boot I have to resort to seat -surfing and a screwdriver. I'm not looking to do this myself (it seems my standby "give it a squirt with WD40" isn't going to do it this time) so it will be booked into the local garage (who have been very good and reasonable so far) but I'm just wondering if anyone else had a similar problem and what it was found to be.  

Edited 11 September, 20223 yr by Paul52
Delete duplicate post

I've not experienced this myself, but I'm guessing that (as you heard it trying to operate as you opened the tailgate) the problem is a broken wire  inside the rubber gaiter between the car and the top of the tailgate. I believe there have been problems reported here involving intermittent/no rear wiper operation due to broken wire(s) in that gaiter.

Thanks Muddyjim. Reading Thinkingsquirrel's saga of finding his wiring fault I don't think I'm inclined to have a go at sorting the problem myself. And just to make it interesting just when I thought it had given up the ghost completely today it unlocked on the key fob without a problem. Sometimes you wish for those days when you inserted and turned a key.... 

Had this recently on our car.  The tailgate lock mechanism had failed somewhere internally and when you press the release it just made a whirring noise.

 

All sorts of Internet wisdom suggested it's got water in it from leaks around the rear wiper seal but that wasn't the case for me.

 

I replaced the latch with a second hand one from eBay - works fine again now.  In fact the biggest struggle I had was getting the trim panel off the inside of the tailgate !!

 

Phil.

Thanks Phil. It does seem my problem could be symptomatic of several things so I think letting someone with the right skills and equipment is going to be the sensible way to go. Time to book it into the garage....

The tailgate catch finally gave up the ghost. It turns out it was a wiring fault. Now all been fixed at a cost of £360 including a new catch as preventative maintenance (better to get it now rather than risk another bill in the future). In fairness it's only the second substantial bill in over nine years, excluding items such as tyres.

Not really relevant, but I thought I had a similar problem some time ago. Clicking and whirring, but door would not open.

 

Turned out the door seals had "glued" to the door frame 😌. Cleaned the door frame with WD40, and used some rubber lube on the seals - been fine ever since.