Mine is almost rubbing too. I called Toyota Corporate after the dealer was dragging their feet. It took over a month for some reason, but they finally said they’re going to order parts and it will be covered under warranty. The dealer is still dragging their feet though, it’s still not fixed yet.
That’s completely unacceptable. The service advisor at my dealer accused me of breaking it as well. Mine still isn’t fixed yet, but Toyota corporate said they would fix it under warranty.
This is really Fd up. Toyota should be ashamed! This still haven’t fixed mine, last I heard they were “ordering parts.” I’m most likely never buying another Toyota.
Nice write-up. Did you happened to take any pictures? And replacing just one of the two hinges was the way to go? I would have thought that the "good" one would have been distorted at least a little? And did the bad hinge seem to be binding which may have caused the crack?Hi,
I have a 2020 RAV4 hybrid with the power lift gate.
I have had the same experience as described above and the passenger side liftgate hinge bent just as the pictures above show.
This started with the liftgate not wanting to close under power - it would start down and then just stop. At first, it could be manually closed and would latch, but over a few days it got progressively worse (presumably as the hinge bent further).
I took it to the dealer as its still under warranty. Had a very long discussion with the service manager and they just would not fix it under warranty. This ended with them saying my only option would be to take it directly to Toyota.
They gave me an estimate for fixing it and it was $14000! Lots of very detailed stuff in the estimate including replacing both hinges (even though one looked fine) and 4.1 hours of labor for painting (I guess they wanted to paint that new hinge very carefully).
I decided to give the hinge replacement a try myself and ordered the part from the dealer ($54). I figured if it turned out to be beyond me I could just take the car and hinge to our nearby body shop and let them do it. Hinge just came in today (took about 3 days).
I just finished replacing the hinge and it was surprisingly easy -- less than 2 hours going very slow.
Step by step...
- Took a bunch of closeup pics to document what the clearances were all around the hinge and tailgate.
- Pulled the 3 push pins holding the aft end of the headliner in place.
- Release the top of the trim panel around the passenger side rear window.
- The above two steps allow you to pull down the headliner enough to get access to the bolts holding the hinge to the body.
- Tied the liftgate to the tracks on my garage door to support the weight of the liftgate.
- Did not do anything to the lift actuators.
- Removed the two nuts holding hinge to body (12 mm). These are the bolts that look like rivets from the top, but are normal threaded bolts on bottom.
- Removed the two bolts holding hinge to liftgate (also 12 mm).
- Pulled the old hinge out and cleaned up the sealant around it with a chisel.
- Put the new hinge into the body holes and secured with with the old nuts - loosely tightened.
- I had cut some wood spacers to the gap sizes (vertical and horizontal) on the driver side hinge and I used these to position the passenger side of the lifetgate. I had to use a ratchet strap from back edge of liftgate to my roof rack to pull the liftgate forward so that spacing was the same as on the driver side and so that the two bolts holding the hinge to the lift gate could be inserted.
- I thought that some sort of alignment would be necessary to get the door lined up with the new hinge, but decided to just fully tighten all the bolts on the new hinge and just see how bad it was.
- Turned out it was fine with no adjustment - maybe just lucky. The door opens and closes and latches normally using the open and close buttons.
Just thought I would pass this on for others thinking about the DIY solution
Gary
Hi,
In Canada the basic LE gaz model has the manual liftgate. So there are parts for it at least in Canada. I'd think they also exist in the US.
The XLE trim in the US also has a manual lift gate.
I seems to me you would only have to change the struts to those for the manual gate and find and remove the fuse for the power liftgate (or disconnect the power wire to it if that doesn't set a code and a warning on the MID screen). I assume your RAV has the release button in the handle above the license plate.
Have you heard any update about this or do you have any names or resources to reference? My dealership is trying to make me pay a body shop to get my hatch fixed so I’m hoping to gather some good talking points for when I talk directly with Toyota corporate on the issue.
On the power lift gate, the last part of closing it sounds like a motor of some sort pulls the latch closed the last little bit once the gate is all the way down. Is this how the manual latch sounds? Probably not since to close the manual lift gate, you would "slam" it like closing a door.
I have a '21 ICE XLE with manual gate. There is no noise and absolutely no electric motor. You just grab the two internal handles and pull it down and it latches by its own weight.
Well, you did well getting them to repair it under warranty. I had a half hour plus discussion with the service manager and could not get them to do it under warranty - so, feel good about that.
The dealer initially incorrectly accused me of breaking the hinge. It wasn’t until I got Toyota corporate involved and referenced this forum they they finally agreed to fix it. The door isn’t currently rubbing, but it was when the hinge was broken. I just don’t want it to get worse over time and rub again. I read somewhere else that someone had the same hinge break again after being repaired.
Do you recall who you spoke to at Toyota corporate? I’m having same issue and anytime I bring up this forum there stance is that they don’t accept any Information that isn’t from their own website.
All I remember is his first name was Eric. At that point though, my local dealer had already submitted it to corporate for approval. It’s really ridiculous how they try to blame us, when they know there’s an issue! Good luck!
