My son's 89 Firebird XS had a hatch which wouldn't latch down. We removed the inside plastic trim and pulled the mechanism to find the defective pull-down motor, etc. Instead of trying to repair the broken plastic on the motor, we removed all of the pull-down stuff (motor, switch, etc.). We then (through trial and error) figured out how high the latch had to be to securely latch down the hatch. We screwed a 4" long X 1" wide metal plate across the mounting bracket on the back side (facing the back of the car when mounted). We drilled and tapped a hole in the metal loop which originally held the pivot pin for the pull-down motor. We drilled the new metal plate and locked the mounting bracket to the latch slide mechanism. In our case, the slides for the latch had to be recessed down about 1/2" for proper operation. Once you do this, you have about 1/2" adjustment with the 3 mounting bolts for final tweaking of the latch. The key and electric release still work great and it probably can't break down.

Hope this helps.

 

Sure you can defeat the pull-down portion of the latch assy. You can also buy the replacement parts to repair them a lot easier. The motor housing and gear nut are both available through the dealer. The only item that wasn't available was the plastic guides themselves. That is until my company made them available. There was a purpose to the hatch pull-down unit, (to gently seal the hatch seals allowing the air time to escape). If you prefer to defeat them, then at lease leave a window rolled down a little so the pressure formed when lowering the hatch (or in your case slamming, repeatedly) will not prevent the hatch from latching. I think Drew described it's purpose in a prior post best. Good luck, Lon.

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90 RS Convertible
Owner: Top-Down Solutions
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