Ok, back to paint and body stuff.
I got a hatch for my '86 GT from a salvage yard, here it is:
First thing to do, especially if it's bad dirty, is to wash it. This one isn't, so next thing is to tear down the panel (disassemble). This part obviously has a wiring harness in it and a spoiler, along with tag lights.
Before you tear down your new panel, take pictures of where wires are routed and where plugs and clips go.
During the tear down, don't be in a rush. Be gentle taking out plugs and nuts and the sort. Have a container to put everything you took off the panel in to. On my hatch, two of the nuts were frozen onto the bolts that attach to the spoiler. I sprayed WD40 on these first after I had removed the plugs from the underside. Even then, they didn't break free. I removed all the nuts that would come off first, then I turned these frozen ones to remove the spoiler from the bolt. They are threaded into the spoiler.
You will want to do these last simply because you'll strip out the spoiler's attachment hole if the spoiler can't move away from the bolt. You can see one of the holes that one of the frozen bolts was attached to in the upper right of the picture.
Once I removed the spoiler and the tag lights, I labeled the different wiring harness' with tape on what they go to. Then I pulled out those two harness' from the left side access hole and labeled and disconnected them from the main harness that runs up the left side of the panel. Then I removed them after I disconnected the ground wires.
You will need to remove the left ball shock mount to remove the wiring harness from the hatch, then you fiddle with the harness until it comes out. It's not very difficult.
Be sure to disconnect the ground wire for the rear window defogger and mark that wire with tape and pen.
With the wires out of the way it's much easier to remove the lock cylinder. Just drill out the rivet holding the cylinder retaining bracket and pop the bracket off. The lock cylinder slides out and Tada! I've disassembled the inside of the tailgate.
Turn the gate over and use a moulding removal tool to take off the trim around the window.
The tool just pries out the clip enough to slip it off. Be very gentle with these mouldings if you want to reuse them, they bend up real easy. Bright side, they can be straightened relatively easy if you're patient.
Last thing is the glass, I'm taking it down to our glass guy on Tuesday to have him take it out. I've done several favors for him so he'll do it for nothing. You can remove your own glass if you like, and I might have done it myself except this hatch isn't mounted to the car. It would have taken more patience than I cared to exert to do this off the car.
Time to really inspect your part without any dangling crap in the way. I used a knotted wire wheel on a four inch grinder to remove the old seam sealer so I could see all along the inner panel. As you can see, the lower right inside panel has rotted through.
I'll repair this by replacing the metal with a comparable gauge clean metal.
I'll continue on this tomorrow when I do the repair itself.
. Poor me! It's almost going to effect my beer budget!
Almost.......
