How to Replace Rear Hatch Door Latch 2000-07 Toyota Highlander

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

To remove your hatch trim panels, they need to be removed in order. You start with the top one, the ones on the sides, and then you can remove this large panel here. Let's start with this one on the driver's side. The clip is not going straight in. It's actually clipping onto the sheet metal this way, so you have to push it up and off. This one's kind of worn out. There might be more force to get yours off and then you'll go along and pop it out of the sheet metal. If it's hard to remove, you can use a plastic prying tool. You can get these from 1A Auto and you can push it in here and help you pry it out.

So there's a metal clip here and here. There's supposed to be one here. It's missing. Somebody probably had this off before, and then this clip here clips over the sheet metal this way because otherwise, the wiring harness would be in the way. You can put that aside.

This trim panel uses the same style clips. You pull down on it. Pull it away from the hatch and also going to work it out from behind the bigger panel. The metal clips stay inside the metal hatch panel. It's not a big deal. You can just make sure you push these back in over it when you put the trim panel back on. Remove the other side the same way. Pull it out of the clips and then you have to work it underneath this one. So that metal clip came with it. But these two stayed. Not a big deal. The pull handle here.

You're going to remove this plastic cap using the plastic trim tool. Use a 10 millimeter socket extension and a ratchet to remove these bolts. Take the grab handle out. Trim panel is held in with clips around the edge. You need to separate it from the door. Sometimes you can get your hand up here. If you can't, you can go back to your plastic trim tools. Slide it in here and then it'll help me pry it down. Usually once you get one free, you can start to work around the edge. You got to pull it with some amount of force. It feels like you're going to break it. But you're just popping the clips out of the metal. Sometimes the clips come loose and those can be reused. I'm just going to dump those out there. If the clips stay in the panel, it's not a big deal. We can take those out afterwards.

To remove the lower door latch, pop this off the rod to unlock it. Use a flat bladed screwdriver to help me do it. Like that, and then push it up and out and lay that aside. Remove the three 10 millimeter bolts holding it in using a 10 millimeter socket and ratchet. Pass it through the opening and then bring it out the door panel. It's kind of bound up on the cable. I have to move the cable out of the way and pull it down. Clip that out of there. Unplug this electrical connector using a small flat bladed screw driver to unlock it. Slide it out. Remove the control cable here, just pry up on it. It comes right out and then feed the cable out of here. There it is. It's at a weird angle. Pop that up. All right.

Now it's just hanging on this wiring harness here. Use a trim clip tool because this harness that comes off of the latch is actually clipped to the body, so you can unplug it but you still need to unclip it from the hatch panel. So I'm going to pop it out and then unclip it afterwords. Push the lock in and unplug it. Hard to get my fingers in there so I'm using a flat bladed screw driver. Just hold it down and pull it right out.

Reinstall the trunk latch and rear tailgate latch. Start with the cable, I'm just going to turn the whole thing, it's going to go through this way and then loop the cable underneath and then pull it out, slide it in place, push it down to lock it and then I can feed this up and before I go into the panel, I'm going to plug this connector back in. It'll click when it locks in place. Slide it in here, out of the opening. Bolts caught, line up the holes, thread them in by hand. There's no adjustment on this. The adjustment would be done at the striker. Just tighten this up. Starting to get tight, I'll just stop. I'll put the control rod back in here so it will go over. Push down in there and push it over to lock it. That's just the mechanism for locking it—that's why it moved, but you want to push this brown clip back over and that locks it in place. Plug this connector back in, snap it locks into place, this clip didn't break, I just pushed the tabs back together so it can be reused. Push it back into place right there.

If the trim clips stayed in the hatch panel, take a trim clip tool. Just put it on here. Pop it right out. Do that for all the ones that may have stayed behind. These'll just slide back into the panel just like that. Couple of ours are missing. Not a big deal. There's plenty of these holding on. This one over here.

In fact, I'm going to move this one, since some of these are missing, over here. You start with the side trim panel. Going to be a little easier to install these first because the lower trim panel will fit in this groove and the upper one fits over here. So the metal clip stayed on this part of the trim. The other two metal clips stayed inside the body. So we'll kind of line them up. Push them in. Give them a good hit do the same for the other side. Take our rear lower trim panel and get it up in place. Push the clips back in. Final trim piece. We'll put this upper one on. It needs to slide over this and then will get pushed into these openings here. Up with it. Push it in and down. Get it lined up. The trim panel's installed.

To reinstall the pull hand, get the bolt through the metal bracket, 10 millimeter socket. Tighten it. Reinstall the plastic cap and the pull handle's reinstalled.

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