Tailgate soft open shock (anti shock absorber)

Had to work on this portion of the gen3 tundra today...very interesting learning experience

Holla if you need help
It's a bit of a pita
Applies to driver side tailgate bed hinge & it's connection to soft open shock

When you put it back together leave the 2 bolts on the bed side loose or out
& push back both sides of the clip in the shock connector as far back as possible with a small flat head screw driver
Take a long needle nose plier and squeeze the ball portion of hinge into shock connector
Then push in the clip back in to secure the connection with needle nose pliers
I found it easiest to accomplish this from above the joint
There are tight clearance & limited visibility doing this
You will need lots of lights & patience
Note this mechanism is only on drivers side

You can bypass this shock
But your tailgate goes back to the golden days of trucks, like I remember, where you had to carefully lower the tail gate

Oh yeah....& taking it apart....I used a fairly large flat head screw driver & pryed it between the ball & socket joint then tapped it loose with hammer....i thought I'd be buying a new anti shock absorber after the effort
But somehow it all worked out & went back together great

Works & looks fine
Me so happy!

 

What made you mess with it in first place ? ...also wouldn't removal of taillight help like on last gen ?

 

Not sure about the 2/2.5 gen on this matter
As far as why?....well I royally f'ed up about 3 months ago & damaged my tailgate

The tailgate would not close
I got a quote from body shop
They wanted $4200
My Jaw hit the floor

I found a lightly used complete tailgate on ebay minus the wire harness & camera
For $980 shipped to me
The lower left hinge (as I described above) was $75 at the dealer
So for about $1050 I was able to fix it myself