Today I renewed the tailgate gas struts in my GV. I had a persistent loud clunk noise from the left rear side when opening the tailgate manually or on power. I thought it was the gears for the power lift, which sit on the left side of the door. I searched this forum for previous threads and found one that had a link to a short video showing a tailgate with a noise just like mine that was fixed by renewing the tailgate gas struts.

Based on this I bought two new struts. These were quite costly (£60 for two struts off of t'internet). Disappointingly, the costly struts came with no end fittings! As it turns out this was not a big deal and transferring the original fittings onto the new struts was relatively straightforward.

The Torx fittings that hold the fittings in place on the body are quite hard to remove, so I left the top fittings in place, disconnected the bottom fittings, unwound the struts from the top fittings, and then reversed the process. Worked fine. I used a step ladder to support the tailgate whilst working on it...it is VERY heavy. I needed an assistant for a few minutes at the end of the job.

This posting is to feed back to the forum:

Thanks for the help - renewing the two struts as per forum advice was a good fix - the tailgate is now more lively, goes up to full height even when cold, and is quiet - no clunks.

The struts are rated for 900N force which is is a weight of about 90 kg each strut...about 200 pounds for those not yet on modern units.

Thanks again for the sound advice - Happy Motoring.

 

Interesting fault and resultant repair...