I give up on the rear hatch. is there a way to keep the motor in the down position but have the locking mechanism still work, so it can still be open and closed without the motor pulling it down

 

You could unplug it, but the light won't work if you do that. You could hold down the lever that moves it then when it gets to where you want it to be just unplug it. I wouldn't though.

What's wrong with yours?

 

I tried that once - I drilled through the slide, and inserted bolts so that the slide wouldn't move, and disconnected power to the motor. The hatch squeeked really bad, no matter how I adjusted the stops and the rubber bumpers - drove me crazy! 2 weeks later I just fixed the motor to work correctly.

www.top-downsolutions.com has all the parts needed to restore a motor to operate correctly. Lon also has a write-up here about the operation of the motors, how to repair, and everything. It was in pdf form, and was referenced a few days ago, so it should appear in a recent post - do a search for hatch and look through all the threads for the last 4 days, I know it's been less than 4 days since I read it.

 

my motor keeps on pulling even when the stops are as low as it can go. And a few days later it stopped pulling and a few days after that it keeps pulling again.