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I have a 92 Dakota with a stuck tailgate. I finally got it off the truck and found the driver's side latch won't release with the handle. It works when I push the little lever on the side of the latch, so I think the rod needs to be adjusted.
Every reference to latch adjustment starts with "remove the cover on the inside face of the gate behind the latch"' I don't have that cover, so what is the trick to getting inside my tailgate?
Yep someone rhino lined your access panel. If you grind off all your bedliner and decide to put a fresh bedliner on, make sure you coat the tailgate and panel separately so you never have this problem again
The site won't let me post the pictures, but I got the cover off after about an hour of scraping with my multi-tool. Then about 10 minutes to fix it and another 10 for reassembly. The multi-tool made some very precise cuts so I just need to buff the coating off the panel, paint it and spray some rhino or undercoating on to protect it.
I have spent 3 hours trying to load the pictures. The cuts are very impressive (at least to me).
Steve, the forum itself now has a photo upload feature that works very well. When you're writing your post select the icon with the mountains and sun inside a box and upload the pics from your PC. Imgur is my second go-to far as photo hosting goes.
The first was after about 20 minutes at 2:00 AM. The second is once I found all the screws. The last is success at last.
The rest of the job was a piece of cake.
After the holidays I plan to strip ALL the stuff from the panel and paint then coat the thing. The screws will never see more than a coat of paint on the heads.
tailgate access
