instructions for taking apart the hatchback?

As Tideland Prius said, taking it off is easy (just yank it off from all sides gradually). There is no screws, just clips. However, some clips are just male (female ones are the metal body panels). Some have both. The female one stay with body panels, males ones got pull off with the plastic panels. When putting them back, don't just snap them back. Doing it that way, you COULD push the female clips inside the metal hatch body and they are very difficult to retrieve. What to do? Get the female clips off the body penal, snap them togather with the male ones, then put the whole thing back. That way, you won't lose your femal clips into nerver-found land.

This may be confusing but once you take the plastic panel off, you would see what I meant. Good Luck.

P.S. I have taken it off and put it back on many many times (to debug my backview camera problem - long story).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ceric @ Sep 17 2006, 03:16 PM) [snapback]320873[/snapback]</div>

Been there, done that.

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT reinstall the plastic panels until you remove the female clips that may have stayed behind in the aluminum hatch and reattach them to the male parts of the plastic panels. Failure to do so will result in the female clips being pushed into the insides of the aluminum hatch and are damn near impossible to retrieve.

If, by chance, you do manage to lose any of the clips inside the aluminum hatch, then with a lot of effort, shaking of the hatch, and creative use of stiff baling wire, you may be able to manuver them to the bottom of the hatch where they can be raked over with the baling wire to a hole just big enough to reach in and get them.