Fixing a Broken Smart ForTwo Cabriolet Hatch

Overview

The tailgate on my Smart ForTwo Cabriolet wouldn’t open—the latch mechanism had broken off completely. With very little information available online about the internal mechanism, I had to figure this out myself. This repair involved removing interior trim panels, drilling strategic holes to release stuck latches, and ultimately installing a $3 push button as a permanent replacement for the broken latch. Not pretty, but it works.

Key Moments

• Removing interior trim covers with Torx screws
• Discovering the electronic actuator latches on both sides
• Removing latch bolts to drop the tailgate panel
• Drilling holes to access the stuck latch mechanism
• Finding the metal lever that releases the latch with a flathead screwdriver
• Learning from mistakes: one side required extensive drilling, the other just a small hole
• Removing the outer body shell panel (4 Torx screws)
• Discovering the microswitch that triggers the latch release
• Installing a $3 push button from the auto parts store as a replacement
• Wiring the button to the original microswitch connections
• Drilling through the panel for interior access

Full Transcript (Edited)

Alright, so this is kind of the end result after I fixed the tailgate. I apologize for not having a lot of the detailed videos, but I’m not fully set up to record all the details of what I did. But I’m going to try my best to go over what I did to fix this.

As a recap, the issue that I was having was that the latch back here was broken off. If I go in here, there’s absolutely nothing. I didn’t know what the mechanism inside looked like—online there’s very little that I could see.

What I ended up doing was I went inside and I took these covers—this cover right here and this cover. As you can see, that’s one on that side and the other one is up here. It’s just a single Torx screw and then it just clips off. I got to the latches. If you look here, these are the latches that hold the door in place. Let me get closer in there. These have an electronic actuator that when you pull the latch in the back of the hatch, it will trigger those actuators and open the door.

What I ended up doing was I took these two bolts off on that side, which released the latch from the chassis of the car, and I took these two on this side. Believe it or not, with that slack—with this fully loose—the door will actually fall down. These will clear the body without any force whatsoever, and this latch you can just basically pull it out or push it out. That then allowed me to unhook the top here to have more space to work. This usually is like that, but you don’t have any access to those latches unless this door is down.

Once this was down, in order to get this latch out of here—because it was still stuck in there—I had to do some modification. As you can see here, this was my first attempt. I kind of had no idea what was happening in there, so I read online and saw some articles that you could just drill a single hole and stick a screwdriver in and somehow use a lever to have this latch spit out the bracket.

With a single hole I couldn’t get it right, so I was already kind of committed to this. I used my drill to open more and more holes, and this is what I ended up with on this side. I’ll fix that up—I’ll get some plastic repair or something going on here. But whatever, I was just unhappy with the fact that I couldn’t open this gate. I was already willing to—even if I have to go and replace this entire plastic from a new one online—I was willing to do that because I really wanted to have this working.

Eventually I got that working. The way that this released was by pushing—let me switch hands here—getting a flathead screwdriver and there’s this metal piece right here. If you stick your screwdriver in there, then you see—just a slight push that way, like that—you see? If you hear that, that would release this latch and it’ll literally spit it out on this side.

After learning what I did over there, I just did a little hole here and then I was able to kind of wiggle in and do that here without having to destroy this piece of plastic like I did on the other side. This is much cleaner, which would be easier to patch up. But like I said, it didn’t matter.

Once I got those latches out, then I could open this door and take out this panel. Basically what you do is you take off this screw, then you have four other Torx screws here, and then you have this other one. Once you do that, the outer panel—the body shell—will actually fall off, so be prepared for that. That’s why I have this stepstool here to kind of hold it when I was working on it.

What I found inside was that there’s a little microswitch—a little tiny microswitch that all it was doing was that when you held the latch here in your hand, it would click the little microswitch and trigger those things.

What I ended up doing is I went to the auto parts store and for like three bucks I bought a push button. As you can see here, it says “push.” I drilled a hole here and I wired up the two wires that went to the little microswitch into this push button. So when I press this button, it actually opens up. Let me see if we can see something here—you don’t see that happening, but what it does is it releases the door.

Now, I also drilled a hole through this, so now you can open the tailgate from inside the car. You don’t have this right here because I just didn’t want to go and buy a whole entire assembly. I think it’s like 50 bucks for this assembly here, and honestly I think it would just break off again at some point. So now you can actually go in here and with a button—let that drop—I think that’s fine enough for my purposes.

That’s it. Now you can also close this off, but you need to go from inside and open it like that, and it’s fixed.

In another video, I’m going to go over what I’m doing here, which is changing—I was initially going to just change the spark plugs, but after I took apart the coils I realized that there was oil in there. So guess what? Now I’ve got to take all of this stuff off here, including this air thing and all the wiring harness and this thing here—which I don’t know what it is yet—apart so I can change the valve cover gasket. That’s going to be fun. I already ordered it, it’s like 20-something dollars for the gasket kit. It’ll be here on Tuesday, so like a couple days from now—today’s Sunday—and I’ll work on it one evening.

Thanks for watching!

[The video includes additional footage from earlier in the process showing the initial diagnosis and disassembly]

This is my Smart ForTwo and I have it right now on the lift because I’m working on a couple of things. One of the things that I need to do is make this tailgate work again. What’s happening is underneath here, there’s supposed to be a latch or something that I can touch or a button, and it’ll unlatch the sides here, and then I can pull it out and lift this up so I have cargo space. Since I bought this car, I haven’t been able to actually use this.

What I started by doing was getting some of these covers inside out. I started by taking the plastic cover from this side out, and it’s basically held by one Torx screw, and then it just clips off. I started clipping it off here on this side. After I did that, I used another set of Torx bolts to get this bracket out. I did the same thing on the other side—again, one Torx is holding it down, and then I used Torx to get that bracket off.

After I did that, I was able to basically push that out and open it, so I can actually open this out now. I still have those brackets stuck to the tailgate, so I can’t really open this either. There’s another container here that’s stuck there too. But at least now I can finally open this top. You can see I can open it—it has these little levers that I wasn’t able to access before because of the fact that this thing didn’t open.

Now if I step back, you can see that this is how the tailgate is supposed to look. What’s next for me is apparently if I drill a little hole here, I am able to use a screwdriver to release this hook here, and I do that on the same on this side. Then I can open—you can see I can open this and get at the entire mechanism that I need to fix.

It’s part one of taking this apart, and we’ll go from there.