Review on Pop Lock PL1700 Manual Tailgate by Joseph Hamilton

In the last 3 months there have been 3 instances where I have not been able to open the tailgate with this latch handle. The first time I couldn't open the tailgate after slamming the tailgate. Later that day I tried opening it again and after removing the tailgate trim to find out why it wouldn't open, I found that one of the metal rods attached to the handle had come loose from the mechanism. After that I decided to save this handle and always pull the handle to the open position when opening and closing the tailgate. Then the following two events took place. For some reason the handle mechanism that opens the tailgate feels "sticky" when the outside temperature is high (80 to 90). By this I mean that when I pull the lever I realize that the tailgate latches are not fully unlocked and therefore I cannot open the tailgate. When this happens I only found two ways to open the back door. The first is to remove the trunk trim and pull the links yourself to release the trunk latches and the second is to walk around and when the trunk cools it will open. I discovered this second method because the second time this happened I was at the beach and didn't have the tools to take the back door apart and decided to head home and take care of it. After returning home, everything worked perfectly. I'm assuming the cheap materials used for this stylus will soften as the temperature rises or something, but I'm no engineer and that's just a guess. Take what you will but I'll remove that latch handle and put in my old non-latching tailgate handle and look for another option.