Good news on the tailgate gas strut ball ended stud which had ripped out.
I cut a bit of 10 x 4mm steel strip about 30mm long and drilled and tapped an M8 hole about 1/3rd of the way down, by taking the long corners off with an angle grinder and grinding away a little of the remaining stripped 'nut' to form a rough letterbox with my trusty Lidl 'dremel', I tied the strip with a length of cotton through the hole, this allowed me to hold it up and start to screw in the stud, Loctite 270 was applied to both thread and face of 'nut' then the stud was screwed home with some force and the trim pushed back into position and the strut end refitted. No holes drilled in the rear pillar and no balancing nuts on sticks involved (the length and offcentre hole allowed the new 'nut' to rotate and then jam against the inside of the pillar, this anti rotation aspect was what caused me to use the shape and not waste time trying to figure out how to stop an ordinary nut rotating even if I found a way to get it in.
On the cut out front, I have been over the level crossing where previous failure occurred twice and turned at the junction 4 times with no problem, tank is full - time may tell
