[Hugrov]

Just thought I’d do a quick post to help other F36 owners out if you’re experiencing similar issues.

The powered tailgate on my F36 started acting erratically, sometimes only opening up slightly, sometimes opening fully but then not closing etc. The erratic nature of operation drew me to the conclusion that there was possibly a wiring issue. The tailgate could be manually opened and closed without any resistance felt from the motors/drives so I was relatively confident that they were ok.

Anyway, fast forward to an hour or so of stripping the boot panels out and I found the culprit, a broken wire on the left side strut motor connector. As you can see, the wire has broken off flush with the connector so a repair would be difficult. Fortunately I had a OEM repair cable/pin from a previous job so was able to remove the old pin from the connector and install the new one then solder it to the original wiring. The white cable is also showing signs of failing so that will also be getting replaced at some point. I actually plan to extend the wiring for the connector to create a lazy loop, this will hopefully prevent a further occurrence of this problem by preventing straining of the wiring during tailgate operation.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad job to do and all the trim went back in ok with no damaged clips etc, the tailgate continues to operate without any further issues 👍