Replaced: Liftgate Garnish / hatch door handle

Hello,

With help from posts on this site, I was able to successfully replace hatch door handle aka lift-gate garnish. Paid $47 for the part on eBay. Had to spend extra for glue ($5.39) and license plate lamps which were dead ($4.99).

Spent 4/5 hours because it was hard to take out nuts from inside (used a makeshift tool to put them back quickly), some of the plastic connectors for black cover inside of door stayed with body and 3 screws of lock button were rusted.

Had to take help of my handy-man to shave of the heads of those screws because they got damaged when I tried to unscrew them.

Taking out nuts of side bolts was relatively easy. Used pliers to loosen them. Tried same on middle two but gave up. Finally managed to get them out by using pliers on the bolt from front. Had to be careful when removing the nuts so that they don't drop inside the door body.


Removing button to unlock hatch was also difficult even after removing black sleeve. So cut the plastic with hacksaw. Did same when putting the button in new garnish.


New part was black in color. Seller states that it should be painted to match body. I decided to use it as is to contrast Silver body. Inside has 4 bolts (no nuts but that's Ok). Plastic piece in place of button to lock the car and knock-out for rear camera.


Toyota logo is glued. Removed it carefully using a long flat screw driver. The glue is strong.

After putting both buttons in new garnish, tucked the wires.


Was thinking of cutting long bolts so that I can use socket but then thought of using a big flat screwdriver. Jammed it in socket with couple of soft hammer strokes. It was wonderful. No fear of dropping the nuts as the sunk inside the socket. All 4 were done in couple of minutes.


Black garnish looks fine due to black glass above it.

Regards