Striker223

Just get it reasonably tight, if you use the spec you will likely snap them off like many have with so many things on these cars

Gibbs

Doing this repair, I managed to get the interior body panels off the inside of the trunk, including the hidden snaps. The old latch unit came off easily. Here are the old (left) and rebuilt (right) units side by side.

Even though the plastic parts appear intact, I heard and awful shattering / grinding noise the last cycle of its life. Here is a closeup of the old unit and you can see some material caught in the gears.

The easy part of this repair was supposed to be removing the old unit and bolting in the new one because it's just 3 x 10mm bolts. I am meticulous about maintaining this car and very careful in my work, but I could not get the third (aka "top") bolt to go back in all the way and it appears I somehow cross-threaded the hole. So, I ordered 3 brand new bolts from the dealer and I have both a correctly sized tap and thread chaser available. (M6-1.0) I'd love some advice on which to use to clean up that one hole so I can get that third bolt in correctly and so the next person who has to do this doesn't curse my name. TIA

Gibbs

Finished this repair today, but with a little twist. I started with the M6-1.0 thread chaser from this set (along with some light machine oil) to carefully clean out the one cross threaded hole.

Now, the OEM bolts (M6-1.0x12mm) for this job are self centering and have a serrated flange that acts as a kind of lock washer. There is also a place on opposite sides of each shaft where 3 of the threads are flattened out to create an additional locking effect in the hole. When using the OEM bolts, it was hard for me to tell if the resistance I felt was due to cross threading or the design of the bolt itself. Here are photos of the OEM original (silver) and OEM replacement (black) bolts showing the flattened threads.


So, I got a set of three M6-1.0x12mm regular flanged, serrated bolts from Home Depot (bolt and package below) and used one to make sure the hole threads were clean all the way through.


I mounted the remanufactured latch assembly with those 3 Everbuilt bolts and made sure it was properly seated against the trunk lid. Then I removed one of the bolts at a time, applied Loctite Blue, and re-seated it. Once all 3 bolts were seated, I snugged them down. (I'd feel much better about having the exact torque spec, but @Striker223 said that if I used that, I'd likely shear off a head.) Finally, I buttoned things back up and tested all five modes of trunk release including the in-trunk emergency lever. (Don't ask!) Looks like I'm back in business.

Dadgavemethecar

I came here to find a solution and it worked! Tennis bag strap was caught in trunk closing mechanism. Used mechanical key, turned it in the lock, and pushed down on trunk lid. Popped open! Thank you!