Rattling Noise in the Rear of a Pickup How to Diagnose a Truck Tailgate

This truck's always making weird noises. Unbelievable. Time to check that out.

Hey, friends, it's Len from 1A Auto. Today we brought in a vehicle that has a tailgate issue. For our particular application, what we're noticing is, this thing just jiggles around like crazy while I'm trying to drive down the road. Obviously, that's no fun for anybody and it's a little annoying. So, I want to figure out what's going on, and hopefully take care of it.

So what we need to do is have our vehicle safely parked someplace, right? You don't want to be in the middle of the road or anything like that. With that said, go ahead and grab onto your tailgate and give it a little wiggle. We can see the different areas where it seems like it's maybe not exactly latching in very well. And then of course, if I was to grab the bottom area. The lower area is where the hinges are supposed to be. If you can feel it moving around like this, that could be the culprit for the whole thing.

Okay, now with the tailgate open, we have a clear view of our latch over on the driver side. This is the latch area and it needs to function properly. If for some reason you notice that this has a lot of movement, it's supposed to have a little, but if it has a lot that could, of course, be an issue. Also, if you were to look down inside the latch area, here you're gonna see a little rubber bushing type of deal inside there. What that's supposed to do is it's supposed to bump up against your striker, which is located up on the body of the vehicle. And it's supposed to prevent it, so that when this is latched or in the locked position, it doesn't move around on the striker. So if that rubber is worn out or if this can move around, then obviously that's going to be an issue. Check both sides.

So then looking right up here is where your striker is, that's the area where the latch is gonna go. You can tell right where the latch usually hits up against. If for some reason you can tell that it looks like it's worn in, maybe it's got a dimple of some sort, obviously, that could potentially cause an issue. Some strikers are gonna have like a nice rubber coating around the outside, but if you were to turn it around you might see that the coating's missing. If that's the case and it's supposed to have the rubber coating, obviously, you're also going to have an issue.

Now that we've talked about the latch and the striker, it's important to talk about the hinge area. That's gonna be located on both sides of the lower aspect of your tailgate. If you can take your tailgate, and do this, obviously, that's definitely gonna be an issue because if this can shift around like this does, how is the latch going to be able to sit properly? We're gonna check the other side the same way.

Now if your lower hinge is having issues like ours is, more than likely it's because these pieces right here are worn out. Lot of times what happens is, of course, is as the metal's moving around, it's gonna start tearing into these areas. And of course, they're gonna wear out over time, that's just bound to happen.

Okay, so we figured out what's going on with our tailgate. We didn't have very much of an issue with the latches themselves. Luckily. If there was, they're really not very hard to replace. For us personally, it was down at the hinges. The hinges are supposed to have some little bushings like you saw before and it's a good idea to replace them if they start looking like this. Ours in particular only really had this one piece. It should have had four pieces, it only had one. So, why is the tailgate rattling? It doesn't have the plastic bushings in between the metal. That's someplace you have to check and like I said, you wanna check those latches.

All right, friends. So hopefully you enjoyed the video. Hopefully you learned a little something. If you like the video, smash on that like button for me, it would mean the world. While you're at it, why don't you go ahead and subscribe and ring the bell? That way that you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.

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