'03 Ex Sport lift gate latch broke

[JGalan]

When I pulled the latch to open my lift gate it "Popped" and now there is no resistance at all. It just moves freely and will not unlatch, so I am having to load and unload thru the rear window which lifts up fine. Can I buy a replacement part? Is it easy to fix myself?

 

[BamaB2]

Same thing happened on my sons 2001 Sport. There are plastic clips that hold the latch mechanism rods together. One of them had broken. I took the broken part to a Ford dealer, he looked it up and had it in stock. Just a few bucks. The trick is getting the hatch open to access the inside. I was affraid I would break the interior trim panel trying to remove it with the hatch closed so I removed the tag lights and used a long screw driver to operate the latch. Took a few minutes but not bad.

 

[Triton8273]

Have you even opened up the tailgate to see if something either broke or just came unattached?

Your Explorer also isn't the same as ours. You have an Explorer Sport which is actually a 2nd Gen.