So I spent the better part of the day yesterday swapping my rusted old tailgate with a fresh newly painted replacement. What a bear of a job! But I took my time and learned a lot about how to do things the easy way, and even more about doing things the hardway. One little trick I thought I'd share involves the rear washer nozzle - note, my 245 is a '92 so this will only apply to the later cars.

I thought I've read here that it's near impossible to feed the fluid hose back through the hole in the top of the tailgate as it's off center and not a straight feed. I got around that by feeding an 8 inch or so length of 20 gauge wire through. It's stiff enough that it's easy to wiggle through, but flexible enough to be manipulated easily. Once through, I bent the interior side end of the wire about a half inch and stuck the end of the hose on, making sure it was a nice snug fit. Then I just pulled the wire back through until the hose came out the exterior side. Make sure you release the hose from the two retainer clips to get more length. Once out the top of the tailgate, just remove the wire, plug in the nozzle, seat it in place and presto! I don't know if there's an even easier way of doing this, but it worked for me and took less than 2 minutes.

Now, if only the rear washer would work! No fluid is making it to the tailgate. I checked the nozzle and it's not blocked. The pump works fine. Do I need to trace the whole hose to determine the blockage or break? Or is there a check valve or something along the way?