You are all probably tired of hearing me talk about my tailgate, but I can't get the one I recently bought to work. I took it to a shop and they ran power directly into the wire going to the motor (bypassing any switch and going straight to the motor) and the motor did nothing. No signs of it even trying to work. So they told me the motor was bad so I got a new one and it did the same thing. So something besides the motor is wrong and I'm about half tired of screwing with it. What do I need to do to convert it to a manual crank? Is it worth the trouble? I assume it would be a different regulator and everything? I just feel like there's so much less that could go wrong with a manual tailgate than this electric one.

Thanks,
Nick

 

i agree with you. ive had electric's in the past and i love nothing more then the electric motor going out when you need to get something out of the back. or not rolling all the way back up when its cold out.

so basically yea you need the manual regulator and.. thats really pretty much it. you will need the manual crank instead of the keyed plate thats up there but you can use a pickle fork to turn it up and down if you really want to be cheep

 

Thank you big84...you're always helpful!! I don't think LMC has a manual regulator so I may have to look around for a while but this electric tailgate is wearing me out.

 

Did they put a ground to the motor as well? The factory setup grounds through the hinges. If this ground path is inadequate, it can result in an inoperative motor.

 

I had mentioned this to them as well and no one was real sure about it. We did not do that actually, maybe thats the problem. I know that one of the wires coming from the front of the truck has no voltage, so that is why it probably didn't work when we actually had the tailgate on the truck. Consequently, when we took it to the shop they didn't have it grounded while testing it causing it not to work. It's starting to make more sense now. Swartlkk strikes again!! The man knows everything!!

 

Bump for Swartllk (lol)

My '86 blazer has 3 wires running from the tailgate to the firewall where it then goes to an up and down switch on the dashboard which leads to the fuse panel. The wire colors are orange w/ a black stripe and the two others are blue and tan and are kind of bundled together. I have juice on the orange wire but no juice on the 2 bundled together. I am replacing my '86 tailgate with an '87 and the '87 had a ground wire that my previous one didn't. Is this a problem? Do I need to ground the current tailgate's ground wire to the vehicle? I may be way off base here, but I am kind of stuck. Thanks in advance

 

I didn't see a question in your previous post that needed to be responded to. It sounded like you were going to have it tested with a ground.

A ground should be added to any power tailgate and yes, you just bolt it to a suitable portion of the frame or body in the back.

 

Sorry my fault. I wasn't bumping for the previous post but for the post right after (about the wires). I only bumped it bc it was an old thread and I wanted to get your attention. I understand it grounds when it is bolted on, but even after that I have no juice running to those 2 wires that are bunched together. I was mainly asking about what may be causing that and thought that it may be bc we didn't have the ground wire on this newer tailgate hooked up right. But I get what you are saying now. It also looks like the previous owners have removed the "rear window" switch from the dashboard up front. That wouldn't have anything to do with those 2 wires not having juice would it? I don't care about the switch as long as I can put the window up and down with the key, but just putting it out there that it is not hooked up. Thanks again and sorry for writing a damn book.

 

Update:
Finally got to put some quality time in today and the first problem was getting my replacement tailgate to fit nice and flush when closed. We finally figured that out and hooked everything up and the key switch would move the window down, but not up. We got juice on the tan wire and on the orange wire (which always has juice regardless if power is on), but no juice on the blue wire. Thanks to the diagram Swartllk gave, we can see that the blue wire is responsible for moving the window up. So our next step is to get some wire and splice it in to the blue wire's connector and see if that will get the window moving up. It is kind of tough to trace the blue wire and see if there are any burns or bad spots, so we're just going to try a whole new wire. I also found my "rear window" toggle switch and then had to do some digging behind the cd player to find the connector it plugs in to. Put the toggle switch back in there and to my surprise it actually worked. Now getting the connector back up to its proper hole and getting the toggle switch in there may be a different story, but at least I'm making some headway.

Thanks again

 

If you do not have a switch in the dash, then you will not have any power going to either the light blue or tan/white wire going into the tailgate at the bottom. If you are not going to use a dash switch, then shrink wrap the end of each wire separately and tuck them up inside the tailgate somewhere out of the way.

The pink wire feeds the key switch in the tailgate. For UP, the cut-out switch is inline on the light blue wire. This prohibits the closing of the window whenever the tailgate is down. If the switch has failed open or is not properly installed, it will not close when the tailgate is closed and you will not be able to open the window. Many people just bypass this switch.