Should you slam or soft close the liftgate?
 

I've owned the X for about 2 months and have a question. When you close the tailgate and liftgate how do you do it? By this, I mean I know you close the bottom part (tailgate) firmly and it latches. When you close the top half (liftgate), do you slam it shut or soft close it and let the electronics do their work and latch it closed electronically? Which method is better?

I'd say neither..Don't slam anything..especially the doors. use just enough force to shut the top half. (shutting it too softly can somtimes not do the trick). But definitely don't slam it..Back windows have shattered to pieces using that method.

I didn't mean slam. I meant close firmly. When you shut it softly, the electronic lock will engage and lock the tailgate down. So, you always close it hard?

I gently set the lift gate down, then push the middle of the hatch like a button till I hear it automatically latch. I dont let people open and close the lift gate because I know they are going to slam it.

I agree with the Godfather (who wouldn't?). Nice 'n' easy, let the electronic latch do its job. I always feel if I close the lid too hard, eventually it'll cause wear on something:-) Besides, when I hear that little motor whirring, I know for certain the latch is CLOSED.

if mine has an automatic latch than I'm a monkeys ass. Im going to check it tomorrow. 2001 4.4

I think it only came on the facelifted models, but I have to beg people not to slam it. SOFTLY I say and then I hear a huge BANG! makes me want to :spank:

Ditto. Those who don't know will always inviarably slam the gate down.

+1. These tailgates and doors aren't designed to be slammed on a constant basis. I don't have the soft-close on my X3, but whenever I'm at the dealer or with a friend who has the mechanism, I push it down firmly (think *boof*) and let it suck shut.

It's so annoying how people slam doors and the tailgate on my X3. When I drop someone off at their apartment, it always goes like this from the cargo area:

"Hey thanks for the ride, see ya soon"
"Yeah, sure, no problem. Bye"
BANG
*shudder*

I had the exact same question. I have always closed it softly and same as godfather I don't let other people close it. I think I checked the manual and it says to close it lightly as well.

I slam the gate, this tends to get rid of the rattling many complain about. Im not a big fan of it however it seems to work.
I Also adjusted the rubber stoppers and coat them with petroleum jelly now and then. It all seems to help.

2003 4.4, I have to gently slam it in order for it to properly shut :( No softy electronic assist closing. Doing it softly will not lock it.

HA!

I had 3 co-workers in the X5 all day today with 4 stops on our route. It was SLAMMED about 3 times today....One of them was even followed by a "SORRY"!

This one has come up before, and is often tied to the rattles from hell in the tailgate of the E53. Ours has been reasonable tight with just one adjustment so far (is an '06). We had the rattles on our 2001 3.0 also and I've found that the dealer adjusts the hatch...rattles go away for a while (6-12 months) and then they slowly come back, only to be tightened again. A bit of a pain and some X5's seem worse than others...our new-ish 2006 has been good thus far.

Good luck...soft close for sure.

I was thinking the exact same thing :rofl:. Guess ours are too old ('02).

I know that if yu slam it it will definately break the mechanism...it happened on my 99 528iT (wagon) I NEVER let anyone close it....just close it gently and wait for it to be "sucked shut"....

I don't know what year the "soft close auto latch" was implemented, but I do know it was on the 1999 540i BMW's.

Down in Alberta, if it is cold enough, slamming the lift gate will cause it to bounced up again and not latch.

MY 02 I can shut the lower tailgate very softly but have to put a little force in the top part to get it to close so it wont chime "liftgate open"

:iagree: Same with my '01.

Pre-Facelifted = Use force or you'll get a chime.

Facelifted = Gentle...let gravity do it.

the slamming happens from time to time, just because of the simple fact that you can't be everywhere all the time, an I don't feel like saying FREEZE "i'll do that" or "let me put it back there for you" 24/7 , but I do when I can;
what I find is worse is people that think these car are made to be firmly slammed, most people that have never owned a BMW don't realized the doors are heavy yes, but they tend to close themselves like the tailgate, and what you have is people pushing these doors while its already closing on it's own and BAM ....lol but based on previous post you all know that lol

a simple fix would be to make a 1 seater BMW :stickpoke........problems solved :bustingup

Last night my wife approached the tail gate with a box in her hand... I so wanted to get out of the car and open and close the lift gate for her, but since our daughter in the car would have cried with me leaving the car, I just stayed put.

My wife SLAMMED the tail gate closed... so hard ... that I know a BMW angel died somewhere.

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

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.

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.

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.....

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.

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

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.

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.

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

It's not a ford.

Right!!!!

Ford has the foot activated tailgate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRX-7Iw2x-s

I have a 2006 facelift. There is a very good reason not to slam the tailgate. The two rubber stoppers either side in the drain channels are spring loaded. When I first bought mine, I found on odd spring plus a small round cup in one of the wells below the rear light. I also noticed some paint worn off where the upper hatch was striking the metalwork, due to slamming.

I subsequently discovered that the spring should have been located in the rubber buffer unit, and the little cup is an interference fit pressed in to retain the spring.

I replaced both buffers with new units, but a short while after found one of these in the same pieces again, so even a new unit will fail if slammed. I was able to re-assemble and peen over the metal to make a better job of retaining the spring. So, lower the tailgate then press till the auto close takes over is teh right way to do it...