How to Replace Tailgate Hinge Inserts 1996-2002 Dodge RAM 1500

Okay, friends, to get started on this job, what I always like to do is use something soft like a piece of wood, right down on the bumper, and between the tailgate and the bumper. That's just gonna help prevent it from falling down too far. Right there. At this point, we can take this right off of here, just pull on this tab, slide that down. Do the same on the other side. Awesome. Now we're gonna lift the tailgate up and out of here. What you're gonna notice is that one side, or the passenger side on this particular application, is gonna be the side that slides up and out, and then the other side is gonna be a circular area where we're just gonna kinda pull away. So I'm going to go up like this, lift it up, and then out.

Okay, so I've got our kit in hour hand, and to be honest with you, these rectangular pieces right here are gonna go on the truck, these circular pieces right here are the ones that we need for the actual tailgate. So this is the passenger side of the tailgate here, and you're gonna see that there's a little cutout and it's not a complete circle. If you were to look at the driver side, it would be a complete circle. With that said, by looking at the two pieces that we have to offer, you can tell which one goes where. This one right here has a couple of little pitons, those pitons are gonna squeeze together, and they're gonna right through that hole, and that's what's gonna hold it in. So, I'm just gonna go ahead and take it. I'm gonna carefully try to slide it in here. If for some reason it doesn't wanna slide in, this piece could be bent a little bit which isn't really that big of a deal. I'll just take my rubber mallet, and I'll help it along. If you can tell, you wanna make sure that you have this area lined up so it's a nice, smooth hole to go through. If it's turned a little bit, it's really not that big of a deal, but if it's turned too far, just use your pry bar and see if you can get it to move so it lines up perfectly.

So now let's take this other piece and insert it over on the driver side of the tailgate. Now that we have the tailgate all set up, let's make our way back over to the truck. If we come to this area right here, more than likely you're gonna see this, and it's probably gonna look like it's in about this kind of condition especially if your tailgate's rattling around like mine was. Or, you might not even see that it has one at all. With that said, if you have a lot of debris or anything like that, you could try to clean it up real quick, but I wouldn't worry too much about it overall.

Next, I'm gonna take this little piece right here, I'll just slide it over the end, and then I'll help it along with my rubber mallet. And we'll do the same the other side. Now that we have all of our bushings carefully installed, we're gonna go ahead and put the tailgate on. When we put the tailgate on, we wanna come down at an angle and slide the driver side in first because that's the side that has the circle and has to go over this piton. The other side, the passenger side, is gonna kinda come straight on down and it should come right in there. Once we've done that, we'll lower it down and we'll put on our cables. So we'll get our tailgate up onto the bumper here so it doesn't fall down, and we're just gonna get this one lined up with its piton like I said. It's the hardest part because it's a fairly heavy tailgate of course. Slide it on in there. Okay. I got his side in now, so now I'm gonna carefully bring this down a little bit, I'm gonna connect this in. You can see that it has a little piton, that's the lock. So you just slide it over, then the lock makes so it stays. We'll do the same to the other side. Now we can let this down, that feels great, and let's close it. It's like brand new.