Rear lift supports

[shorod]

Has anyone here had to change out the rear lift supports on their MKT with the power rear liftgate? I'm pretty sure the ones in my wife's are failing and that's why the gate wants to drop on her head once it reaches the full height. But as soon as the gate drops, the motor kicks in and wants to close it. So the cycle repeats, making it very difficult to remove the gas lift supports.

Before I go pulling a fuse or two, does anyone know of a way to disable the automatic lift or put it in "maintenance mode"? I have not yet checked the owner's or service manuals.

-Rod

[shorod]

I checked the service manual and it just said to remove the fuses, so that's what I did. One of the lift supports was completely shot. It leaked quite a bit of oil and had absolutely no resistance to compression. The other strut seems to still be okay, but I replaced both anyway.

The lift supports are easy to change and fixed the issue. The hardest part was propping the door open far enough to work on it. Using a push broom worked well for getting the clips lose, then opening the liftgate fully allowed the supports to fall out. New ones snapped back in place. Once I closed the liftgate completely, recalibrating the system just required reinstalling the fuses and opening and closing the liftgate using the buttons.

-Rod