Tailgate light unit removal - how?
 

Owing to a mistake the offside light unit on the tailgate has been damaged. No doubt a new one will cost a fortune and the culprit feels very guilty, but....

How is it removed? There are two obvious Torx screws that loosen it a bit but it seems to be held at the lower edge. And these must be behind the tailgate trim. The upper, plastic one I can sort of unclip, and I managed to get a bit of the lower, carpet-y covered one to release a bit. This showed one of what I suspect are the screws holding the light unit in but I couldn't get any more of the trim off.
The trouble with lots of the trim is that there are one-way plastic clips holding them on, great for manufacture, but a right PITA for removal as often you don't known which way to pull.

Any hints before I do the 40 mile round trip to the nearest franchised dealer? I suppose I shall have to go and get the part, can't find it on any online parts supplier.

We had to do the same with Dad's XC70 after catching a metal bin at the tip.

Ring FRF in Swansea, it cost about £100 delivered for the light unit when we got it a couple of months ago.

We took the car to our local village garage, and were charged £10 for fitting! OK we get our BMW serviced there, and do give him beer, but I'd reckon on it being a 15-20min job for a good local garage.

HTH

Ed

Edit
Just realised do you mean the outer or the inner lights? We (Dad) did the outer light.
Still worth ringing FRF, it's normally with you within 48-72hrs.

As it's tailgate I imagine it's the inner ones. Its an interesting question as what happens when you need to replace a reverse light or rear fog light bulb, surely it doesn't mean a trip to the dealer?

Westyman, the trim on mine was removed as follows:

Remove the two torx screws on the sides of the tailgate located one on each side just near where the carpet bit meets the upper plastic bit.

Remove the two torx screws located in the plastic inside handle located near the bottom of the tailgate to the right. This plastic handle can come out but can also be left in place.

The rest, as you correctly identified, is all plastic clips.

The side parts of the trim can then be shifted down a bit ("down" meaning with the tailgate open) but I don't know if that will give you enough access to the light.

To completely remove the trim:

Remove the 4 torx screws as above.

Grab the bottom of the carpet bit and pull downwards with tailgate open i.e. away from the tailgate.

The side parts come away in the same direction. (Note, the plastic trims on the side, not the top part - although I appreciate it's all one component, come away in the same direction but the clips stay in place).

This may give you enough room to change the light fitting without unclipping the whole assembly.

If you want to remove it completely then the top part is held on with four clips which pull outwards, i.e. backwards away from the car with tailgate open, or downwards if you imagine the tailgate closed.

I posted some pics on my profile album a little while ago in the hope that this might help someone with this trim removal issue.

Hope this helps, if you need anything further send me a pm and maybe I can help over the 'phone.

Thanks Tommyweaves. I got as far as the first few instructions before my bruised hands cried enough and shoved it all back together. I pulled down the carpet covered trim, the one in your profile album (confused me for a bit as its grey trim and mine is beige...durr) which revealed one more Torx screw but undoing that gave no further release of the light unit hence my belief there's another one under the trim. Another trouble is I'm working against the light in the sky, even with 100% cloud cover my old eyes struggle to see upwards.
So basically tug harder.....bit like the old engineering adage, if it won't budge, hit it with a hammer, if it still won't budge, use a bigger hammer.

From your fotos it seems the trim fits around the boot catch, I thought it seemed to be underneath it.

Not quite sure what you mean by inner or outer. It's the light unit that's integral with the tailgate hence pulling trim off the tailgate, not the car body IYSWIM

Is it not dark in Derby at this time of night?!

Give it a good hard tug downwards either side of the tailgate and it'll pop off, assuming you've undone the torx screws in the bottom of the tailgate inner handle. Then tug down on the sides. Basically work from the bottom of the tailgate.

As long as you've undone the screws on the trim the only damage you can do is break a couple of clips. This didn't happen on mine, the clips only got damaged when the glass repair people tried smashing it back into place when they were refitting it very clumsily. The only reason I've been through this exercise was because, as usual, if you want something doing properly you have to do it yourself, so I had it apart twice, once for finding out what the problem was, then a second time to replace the clips they bust.

What I did find was that the plastic mouldings "welded" on to the carpet moulding had come adrift in a couple of places so I used Araldite to stick it back together. Probably not critical but I felt it was worth it in case they rattled.

The trim has a cut out around the boot catch area but the trim actually fits just underneath it by a few millimetres.

Now there's a thought! Head torch on in my Jim jams...LOL

Westyman did you get this apart in the end?

I've just noticed today that my passenger side rear tailgate light has water in the bottom! Another thing I didn't notice when I bought the thing a couple of weeks ago apparently.

So I'm keen to get the light out so I can tip the water out! I got as far as your first post today! I managed to loosen the top of the light but it was still fixed under the carpeted trim of the tailgate.

Can I take this trim off without breaking any clips? Or is it inevitable that I'll break a couple?


Also, the water has collected in the bottom of the light, which on the dry drivers side is the rear fog light. Do the V70's have rear foglights on both sides? Or just the drivers side like my old BMW 3-series?

I presume I did as the car had its new light unit on when it went in p/x a few months after this thread! For the life of me, I cannot remember how I did it, sorry. I also presume that the help from previous posters did help.