Town & Country Rear Hatch Concern

Folks,

My 2002 Town and Country LXi has been acting up in a way I can't quite
resolve. It doesn't happen often but happens enough to be concerning.

Once when I attempted to use the keyless entry control to put the
hatch down, the hatch went half way down, stopped and closed the
locking mechanism making it very difficult to figure out how to close
the hatch.

I've also had this locking mechanism (the latch) close on me several
other times before resulting in the hatch trying to close but not
being able to when the latch rams into the post it's supposed to close
around.

In each case I've had to resort to several guesses as to how to undo
this. I turn the van on, hit the various buttons, try to manually the
door and then, eventually, something gets the latch to open again,
allowing me to close the hatch.

Any ideas? Is it just standard user error?

 

i would say no and the lifgate does have a module that stores fault codes
so that would be the first thing to have done pull codes and if someone
does not have experence working on these don't let them gain it on yours

 

Mine did that once. If you use the manual lever ( above the license plate)
as you would do to open the door manually it will open the locking
mechanism.

 

I could have sword I tried that and failed. I'll make a note to try
this first next time.

I also had ONE isolated case where I hit the button for the hatch to
go down and it went down about 1/3 of the way and just STOPPED DEAD
and then closed the latch. That got me thinking that maybe some sensor
was off.

 

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Have also had hatch problems on my '03, a bit different, but maybe
related ? ?
SOMETIMES when I attempt to open remotely, it will try to open, click
and jiggle a bit and just open itself an inch or two. When I again push
the remote, it will go through and close and lock. Then I again use the
remote and it opens just fine. ONly does this once in a while, doesn't
seem to be any particular sequence that causes it to happen.
Not a huge deal, but certainly doesn't seem to be the way it should work
and would be nice to resolve the problem. Of course the dealer was of no
help at all. He tried the remote, it opened just fine, and then said
no problem ! <sigh>
Zork