:confused: The back latch on the tailgate of my 1996 JeepGrand Cherokee gets stuck. The handlemoves like it will open but it ends up taking several tries before it can beopened, can anyone tell me how to fix that? This vehicle has auto door locks too. My best guess why it gets like that is dust from a gravel road that welive off of but the latch doesn’t seem overly dirty but it is winter and nodust. This same thing happened on my2000 Dodge Caravan too. Perhaps it’s aChrysler thing.

Mine did same thing. Remove inner panel and where the handle pivots, you'll see the mecanism. I took a plier and bent the metal plate so there is no play between handle and metal plate. Clean everything up as well using brake cleaner and add lubricant.
Good luck.

to get it open, try to push in on the liftgate, then pull the handle to open and lift the gate. then you should be able to do what jeeppyfan says.

Sound like a simple solution, I will give it a try.

Thanks

:wink: I was able to Fix this by opening the back inside of the tailgate and tightening a metric #10 nut located to my left of the opening latch that keeps the latch handle secure to the tailgate. There was enough play in the handle that it would not open all the time.

While I was in there I built up the bar that the latch pushes on to open the tailgate by attaching a zip tie around the length of the bar and holding it in place with some Liquid gasket.

Thanks to the above posters for their idea!