As cars get older, one frequently sees places where, depending on your viewpoint, either the original design wasn’t quite good enough or else the designer avoided wasteful ‘over engineering’, which resulted in failure as or after the car’s design life was exceeded!
One such place, on many hatchback and estate cars, is where the gas-filled tailgate struts attach to the bodywork. Here, two relatively small areas each take all the strain and forces exerted by the pushing down action of a strut which must be strong enough to support half the weight of the tailgate.
Repair techniques
There are generally two issues with repairing this area. First, because the
