Tailgate trial

Our quest to 'lightweight' the car continues.

In our world ''lightweight' is a verb.  This time it's the tailgate.  Time to get this trim off.  No screws to be seen so where do we start?

There are a couple of caps we can pop off to hopefully reveal some screws that'll get us started.

Nope.

So there's this other cover that's going to pop off and hopefully show us how to undo this thing.

Turn's out it's just access to the lock/latch.  Interesting but not helpful.

Time to get brave.  Turns out that if you prise the trim away from the metal it will come off, it's a bunch of poppers like the door card and you have to work your way around.  But it's really unpleasant pulling it off because it takes a lot of effort or leverage to pull it apart and flexes and feels as though it's going to break.  In this case it came apart with a series of loud cracks but miraculously nothing was damaged.

There are actually two parts to this.  The thinner part is held on with some clips but again it just pulls off.

So there we have it.  The trim is off and we get a good look at the bits inside.

The thing that stands out the most is the wiper motor.  That's got to come off.  3 screws and a clip.

On the outside the wiper cap flicks off to reveal the single screw that attaches the wiper.  Undo that and the assembly comes off.  The rubber seal comes away easily.

So that's nearly a kilogram.

There is now a gaping hole in the window.

Electrical tape.  For now.

Checkout

So for now that's the tailgate done, and the offside rear passenger door has now been done to the same extent as the nearside door (see the previous blog).

Let's see what weight was removed from the tailgate:

Wiper motor 940g

2 x small trim bits 62g
Large tailgate trim part 1433g

Smaller tailgate trim part 574g

Sub-total: 3009g

Add that to the 48.9kg that has already come out the car:

Total: 51.9kg

To give it some perspective.  This is the about the weight of small adult like Mother Teresa. Or a leopard.