the rear liftgate on my 96 grand cherokee seems to be broken.. it will not open from the outside, previous owner removed the inside body panel on the rear lift gate to open it from the inside... im not 100% sure why it will not work, but ive read many people complain of this issue before...

what are the most common problems causing grand cherokee lift gates of around this year to malfunction and not be able to open?

 

Mine was the same way. I had to lift the handle and bump the liftgate to get it to open. Once I got it opened I lubricated the latching mechanism and it works fine now.

 

did you do this from the inside or the outside? how hard did you bump it?... it doesnt seem to work so well for me

 

on mine i have to push on either side of the latch with my thumbs, and pull the latch with my fingers. it works every time but it's annoying because it's a 2 handed procedure, which makes it hard when you've got stuff in your hands. need to figure out a fix..

 

What I did to fix mine was open it from the inside. Took the latch and handle assembly out, lubed it all up. Also had to reconnect the rod in there. Has worked great since.

 

Same thing for my 93, lubed and adj. disconnect rods that pulls the pins back. Work fine now.

 

You might check the 2 adj stand off's at both ends of the lift gate. If their to tight, it will make it hard to open or shut also. take some grease to the rubber ends back them off and turn them in untill you see the grease on the resting place where they hit. Their should just touch to stop any vibration on the lift gate.

 

The first couple of times I had to bump it pretty hard from the outside. After I lubed it I opened and closed it several times to get everything lubed good. Since then it has worked great.

 

my guess is the linkage inside is broken because when i lift the handle to open the lift gate.. the handle stays in position, it doesnt spring back down like it should... so the latch itself to open the lift gate doesnt seem to be connected to anything anymore

 

does anyone know if the linkage inside a 96 GCs liftgate is some sort of cable, or a bar of some sort?

 

there's no cables. i had mine apart the other day trying to figure out what's wrong with it but i ran out of time and had to put everything back.