Originally Posted by
whtbaron
Sooo... if anyone is interested, this is a $730 lesson in Toyota rear latches, the patient in question being a 2008 Toyota Rav 4. We've had a an 03, 08 and 2012 so in general, the Rav's have been pretty good to us, and this 08 "second car" doubles as my work truck when I'm sampling water for a local watershed initiative. It takes a beating and gets a lot of it's mileage on dusty, muddy and snowcovered gravel roads. I've had the rear latch jamb up with dirt before, so I keep a can of WD-40 in the back to wash it out on such occasions. Just before Xmas I'm running for parts on the highway on a nasty 60kmwind/blowing snow/drifting snow sort of day, and the f'n back door decides it wants to swing open. I'm out there in a wind that would turn your roids inside out washing out the latch (thinking it was probably ice) with the WD-40 and slamming the door. Grab it...pull it.... seems fine. 5 miles down the road it swings open again when I'm getting ready to pass a truck. Repeat this several times and learn several new words. It's 4:30 pm on a Friday and I pull into a garage a few miles from home. Young mechanic pours deicer, penetrating oils, blasts it with air ... all the things I thought might fix it, but sadly comes to the conclusion that there is something wrong with the latch and that I likely need a new one. No jobber parts, so I need to call Toyota. At this point I'm thinking the stupid price for a $45 door latch might be around $300.... but no.... wait for it... it sells for $530 Cdn. and the dealer is quoting me another $160 for installation (which really wasn't horrible considering) but in the end with taxes and whatever I'm into it for $730. When they can get it...which turned out to be after New Years after 2 hour long trips to the dealership with the back door being held by a tarp strap. After we get the new one installed (which turned out to be an upgraded part... gee....wonder why?) I insist on bringing the old one home to see what went wrong (I was thinking it might be a 50 cent spring). Warning #1.... if you ever decide to open one of these up, I'll give you about a 50/50 chance of ever getting it back together so it will work, and all the plastic trim around it (which encloses a bunch of little odd shaped springs and an electric motor for the door lock) is very easy to break. Once you get it open, you will discover that the basic latch mechanism is a sealed , riveted unit that you probably can't open up with destroying it. The good news is that you probably don't have to open it up. The latch consists of 2 very basic moving parts... a horseshoe shaped piece at the back that wraps around the stationary part of the latch in the door jamb, and a small apostrophe shaped dog the flips up to hold it in the lock position. Both the mechanic and I thought the U shaped piece wasn't getting pushed all the way back so we attempted several ways to solve that... trying to move the stationary part of the latch back, wrapping it with thin tubing and tape, applying liberal amounts of lubricant etc. The real problem isn't the U shaped piece, it's the dog in front of it. It cakes up with some seriously packed in crud and no longer is returning to the top position. This allows the U shape to slip back half way, and rest against the rear part of the U instead of the face. If the metal is all there on the U, and the leading edge of the dog, and no springs are broke, chances are your the victim of crud. Even with the latch disassembled it took me a good 15 minutes to get that dog up and working properly. So, in the end my suggestion... before you spend $730 at the dealership.... is this. Get the pressure washer out and blast the snot out of the latch assembly, both in an open, closed and half open position. You need to soften up the crud that is packed in around the sides of the dog. Use a very small bent screw driver or dental pick to get in around the dog and scrap the crud out from along both sides of it's travel. Keep in mind that any lubricants you use will attract more dust and cause the problem to reoccur, so wash it out good with liberal amounts of WD-40 and blast it with air. All the time you are doing this, keeping flicking the rear handle to flip the dog up and down through it's travel... like a half a gazillion times. You may have to use the pick to pull it all the way up a couple times. Once you get it back to the top of it's full travel, and it is holding the front half of the U and not the back (this is what allows the door to feel latched, but will still pop open when you hit a bump) then you can lubricate it with something like a graphite spray to (hopefully) lubricate but not attract dust. The original latch also had rubber boots on the U shape that can become worn and caught up in the latch. You may have to carefully remove that with a sharp knife. The door might rattle a little without it, but it isn't necessary for the proper action of the latch. I don't think the revised new latch has that. Soooo.... in a nutshell, that's how you save $700 on your Rav 4.... and you're welcome.
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