Should you slam or soft close the liftgate?

[omodos]

well I am wondering if my weird issue I am having with rear upper tailgate not opening when tried from the keyfob has anything to do with this slamming???? cos my wife does slam it shut....I wont repeat the post but basically keyfob opening of the rear upper part of taligate is a no go..if i unlock car and then press soft touch button on car it opens and closes fine

[upallnight]

The only other people that get stuff out of the back of the X are the wife and kids, and if I told them once I told them a thousand times, don't slam the hatch. But they never listen, Bang.

[iansanderson]

I have to assume BMW built in the ability for slamming of the soft close top hatch. Many have done it on mine, and it still works great.

My Plebian-closing bottom half gets slammed no matter what or else there will be rattles.

[omodos]

Anyone but myself who opens it and closes it does slam it, I mentioned in another post I have an issue , if I press the button under the handle on the upper hatch I instinctively lift and it opens fine, If I press button for it to open and don't lift it at the same time, then it locks back down again.

Helpful posts here have been good, but looks like I have to remove latch and see what is really going on.....

[wpoll]

You might try adjusting the two rubber stops on either side of the tailgate. Raise them a couple of millimeters and this will put more tension on the closed tailgate, causing it to pop up slightly when it's unlatched by the fob button. I notice my tailgate pops up a small amount when unlatched remotely.

[g300d]

Originally Posted by omodos

Anyone but myself who opens it and closes it does slam it, I mentioned in another post I have an issue , if I press the button under the handle on the upper hatch I instinctively lift and it opens fine, If I press button for it to open and don't lift it at the same time, then it locks back down again.

Helpful posts here have been good, but looks like I have to remove latch and see what is really going on.....

That's a bit different from how I understood from your other thread. It seemed there that the latch was not fully releasing. It seems it does release but it gets sucks down?

Mine did this at one time. Does the hatch get sucked closed under its own weight when you lower it closed?

Could be just the stopper as mentioned. Or it could be the rubber ball beside the latch.

I updated to spring loaded stoppers and that fixed it for me.

[omodos]

Originally Posted by g300d

That's a bit different from how I understood from your other thread. It seemed there that the latch was not fully releasing. It seems it does release but it gets sucks down?

Mine did this at one time. Does the hatch get sucked closed under its own weight when you lower it closed?

Could be just the stopper as mentioned. Or it could be the rubber ball beside the latch.

I updated to spring loaded stoppers and that fixed it for me.

apologies for confusion, it will close under its own weight when I lower it....and will open when I raise it from the 'handle' but when unlocked via keyfob it pops up , you try to raise via the handle and it locks again (ps your advice to lube it did help I was able to lift it a couple of times with a little extra force than usual after lubing latch) but on trying a few morre times it did the same

No sleep lost as long as i can open via the 'normal' way dont mind if the ability to unlock and open the upper tailgate alone has gone as such, was curious as to why...I will fiddle with the stoppers and report back, the stopper by the actual latch seems fixed though so cant meddle there

[Clockwork]

Omodos, you could always buy the springs to go around the polished shaft of the gas shock and when you open the springs open the gate more, all the while NOT putting extra stress on the electronic components. there are a few threads here about the hatch springs ppl have been buying (myself included) from e-bay. best invention for trunks with no auto-raise feature.

[g300d]

No worries omodos, just clarifying.

For some reason mine started doing that as well, and in retrospect I'm guessing it was because of lost tension as rubber components aged maybe?

I read the stoppers can be adjusted by losening the torx screw in the middle but I never got to confirm. I just went ahead and updated them to the spring loaded ones and that fixed it. They put upward tension so that when the hatch releases it doesent get sucked back in. Reduced hatch rattle by a lot too!

Alternatively you can get the hatch springs clockwork mentioned.

I was hesitant to do springs on the hatch for fear of undue pressure on the soft close mechanism but I guess it's ok since BMW itself designed and implemented spring loaded stoppers which put tension on the soft close mechanism. I probably wouldnt do both at the same time since it might be a lot of pressure for the mechanism. If I were to choose one now I would lean towards the springs to get the the cool self-raising hatch feature.

If you do dig into it, I'd be interested to know the cause of the problem.

[94csi]

Mine wouldn't slam unless I tried really hard. If yours is that easy to slam I would recommend changing out the struts as they should give more resistance to that IMO