You will remember that I related my cleaning of the door latches,
strikers, and hinges to rid them of all traces of grease and dirt, and
their relubrication them.

I went into the tailgate this afternoon for much the same purpose. I
removed the latch and handle, sprayed the inside of the tailgate with
Simple Green, scrubbed it all out with a stiff brush, then rinsed,
dried, and sprayed a bit of WD40 in the groove between the inner and
outer panel before waxing, lubing, and reassembling.

Sure, it would sound like a rediciulous amount of work to do when some
spray grease could be shot up into the latch and you could call it a
day. BUT....

What I found in there made me glad I did such a thorough job:

-Both Phillips head screws holding the central locking solenoid were
loose.
-Of the three 8mm bolts (or are they 6?) holding the wiper motor on
its bracket, one was loose and another was backed out about half way.
-One of the center bolts that holds the exterior handle to the body
was laying inside the tailgate and one of the others was loose.
-A chunk of the fiberboard of the tailgate panel was loose in the
tailgate cavity as well.

So none of that was exactly life threatening, but any of those could
have caused parts to break or malfunction, and the hour or so I spent
out there doing that job could have possibly saved me broken parts, a
jammed tailgate, or a misfunctioning or a possibly burned out wiper
motor.

            __  __
    Randy & \ \/ /alerie's
             \__/olvos
'90 245 Estate  -  '93 965 Estate
  "Shelby"     &      "Kate"