I was told that if the rear hatch light turns off when you press the striker switch that the switch is good, is this true? My rear hatch stopped working AGAIN. I pull it down and engage the striker and NOTHING. Fuse ok, tested all wires ok. I thought my rear hatch pull-down motor had died, so I tore it down and replaced it again with a brand new motor. It is still doing NOTHING. I'm so fed up with this piece of **** I wish I could find a way to convert to a manual pull down. **** this power pull down bullshit.

 

There is a microswitch that switches power one way or the other, make sure it is the right position. Right now Im not sure which way is which but I can look tomorrow.

 

The reversing switch attached to the engine itself? I believe that is in the "up" position right now.

 

I tried the reversing switch in the down position and that didn't do it either. I guess now it is time to try replacing the reversing switch itself and maybe ANOTHER new motor to make sure this one wasn't bad out of the box.

 

I converted my Formula to a manual latch assembly. You will need to drill out the monting panel from your car, also the one from a manual latch car, then I had to weld in the manual latches mounting panel. Then mount the manual latch assembly loosley. have a friend close the hatch, while you align the manual latch assembly, and tighten the bolts.

All in all it took me and a buddy about a 1/2 hour to do the conversion, and he has done the conversion on 2 more of his 3rd Gens (88 Firebird and 86 T/A) as well

 

Good info, this might be my only hope. I really can't figure out what the problem is this time. I could pay 80$ for a used reversing switch and a new striker sensor and hope it works after that but I might just get burned again. I'm sick of buying new parts for this thing and having it do the same **** it did with the old broken parts. I'm very, VERY sick of riding aroun with the hatch not pulled down all the way.

 

You may want to look at TDS over on the right he sells rebuilt units. Mine drove me crasy a few years ago by not turning off the motor and it kept killing my battery. Unfortantly Figuring out this took some time since it wasn't making any noise or anything. I ended up replacing the switches and the relay just to be sure.

Why not get out a multimeter and test the switches? Test to make sure you are getting a good 12v on the hot wires. You can test the relay with some wire and a 12v battery and a multimeter. You can test the motor by hooking it up directly to a 12v source.