The other morning the hatch wouldn't lift despite using the garnish button. Ripped it right off. Thanks to the many generous folk here I have a new aftermarket garnish on the way, but the hatch problem remains. Reading through a gazillion threads I have removed the latch mechanism, cleaned it and put white lithium grease on it. The hatch still doesn't pop open as it should/used to and requires two hands. It is the consensus here that the issue is likely the struts (which I replaced last year)? I just got crummy struts? Is there a preferred strut I should be purchasing? Thanks.
Take a look at Amayama: they sell mainly OEM, and in my experience very cheap, even with shipping. So far I have had no duty or sales tax levied either.
Just to add, if you're getting multiple items shipped, try to get them all from the same country, so you only incur one shipping charge. It's fairly easy to do that: they present you all the options, the various countries it can ship from. Typically it's UAE or Japan.
Garnish replacement was done in probably 20 minutes thanks to everyone's previous posts here which is good, because it was in the low 20's. Is there a preferred method to remove the Toyota logo/emblem from the garnish or is it just 'Pry carefully. Very, very carefully.'? (The hatch seems to be opening fine now, so maybe the latch just needed to work in a bit more.)
