Lock Assembly on Rear HATCH missing????

[stellarsoleill]

I can back home from the holiday to find my key and entire assembly missing!
I looked inside the hole with my flashlight and saw it all there! No damage done to the actual body of the truck...but my rear wipers dont work, rear defoggers, rear windshield wiper fluid and of course truck will not unlock in back...

So can anyone tell me how to fix this..here is a pic....I have a styrofoam tube plugging up the hole as I dont want water seeping in. Obviously my wires inside are disconnected too. HELP:frusty:

 

[99 sr5 highlander]

I'm guessing the little plastic mounts on the back side of the licence plate trim just broke and the lock fell down in. That's what happened to mine. For a while I just used jbweld to hold the lock cylinder in place. I eventually found a whole new plastic piece from a forum member, but the jbweld seemed to work fairly well.

 

[0xfded]

Same thing happened to me. Probably eventually happens to everyone, since the lock cylinder is mounted into plastic, and the threads eventually strip out. If you open up the panel, and nothing is broken off, you can just remount it with some larger screws to get some bite in the plastic.

And if it's broken, yeah, JB it.

 

[hambob]

I had the same thing when I bought my truck. It was a great barganing tool. After opening it up I saw that the plastic was broken so I used RTV. My thinking was that I want some flexibility so it wouldn't break off in the temperature extremes(I live in canada). Also, not that you're going to do it but don't roll the back window down before you fix it, it would be bad.

Good luck