Tailgate not closing

[Andrew25]

Hey I’m in a bit of an emergency here. I parked the car and opened the trunk, then went ahead and lowered the tailgate as always to close the trunk. Now no matter what I do, the tailgate will not fully trigger the latch and the car will display the “trunk open” light in the dashboard. I can’t fully close the car and I can’t even drive back home, since it’s actually not fully closed. I try searching the forums but didn’t find an answer. Only found the topic to locate the handle to unlock the trunk inside the car. If I trigger the latch by hand it works, and the light goes away so I suspect the metal piece hanging down from the tailgate isn’t fully triggering the latch. Also the whole latch mechanism wobbles. The tailgate already gave me headaches, but it closed fine with a nice push until today. What can I do?

 

[Andrew25]

Got it sorted. I had to disassemble the latch assembly and found that the nuts were totally loose. I recommend keeping a set of torx screwdrivers and some wrenches (6-10) in the car!

 

[F1 SML8R]

Post some pics if you can of what was loose. Was it the top latch or bottom assembly?