Hey Everyone,

It seems my tailgate operates normally for the most part. The actuator pulls in the taillgate upon closing and locks it in. The release button on the outside will activate and release the latch after all the doors are unlocked.

But using the lock cylinder with the key is not possible. The cylinder will not turn left or right. I did notice putting the key in took a little bit of force and the tumblers felt a bit dry. So I sprayed in some 3-1 Dry lock lube and that helped a bunch. After working the key in and out the key seems like it goes all the way in with no issue now. However the cylinder will not turn.

It seems like the tumblers may have corroded in place. I'm going to let the lube work its magic overnight and try again tomorrow. In case I don't have any luck, I'm thinking I may need to remove the cylinder at some point.

Does anyone have instructions for how to get it out? To be clear I'm talking about just the lock cylinder, not the actuator.

I had a similar problem years ago because I never used my key to open the tailgate, and the tumblers “seized up”.

I used graphite spray successfully to loosen the tumblers. I don’t know how similar it is to the lube you used.

Letting your lube soak overnight should help.

@fastbroshi I have this same problem, but I haven't really put effort into fixing it. I saw a thread recently where a guy pulled off the garnish piece from the hatch (where the toyota badge is) to paint it. You should be able to follow his removal instructions to get the core out

EDIT: Found it. Starts on post #18: TREVLOC's Thread

Thanks Flash, but I got tired of looking and got busy trying. I ended up getting the inside trim panel off no problem. I used to work at a body shop but I'd never run across one of these before. Figured it out easy-peasy.

After you take off the two little access panels, there is a 10mm bolt holding the strap to remove. After that you can just use your hands to start gently prying the plastic away from the hatch. There's just a bunch of push clips all the way around the perimeter and one just off of left-center. Then there's two 10mm nuts and an electrical connector holding the lock cylinder and its gasket to the hatch.

Turns out the lock cylinder was not gummed up or corroded at all like I'd suspected. I took the lock to a locksmith and he had to grind down some of the pins as it seems some of them weren't falling all the way into place. The smith didn't think it was due to key wear as the key still looks fairly sharp.

We noticed the return spring seems a bit weak, or maybe there's some other miniscule bit of resistance keeping the lock from snapping back to the 12 o'clock position, but it's much better than it was!

I've got everything back together and I've verified it works now.

@fastbroshi mind dropping what the locksmith ran you $$? If it's not much, I'll go ahead and try to do the same. I just didn't want to spend the money on replacing the lock core before, as I thought that was my only option.

He charged me $25. It took all of a half hour.