I don't think the hatch pull down mechanism works properly on my car. The dealer says it is normal, but dropping it from about 10 inches does not engage the latch. Has anyone else had a similar problem? I guess I am not sure why they put this on a Corvette (sports car?) in the first place. Maybe Cadillac Division had a bunch of spare ones. Anyway, since it is there I want it to work.

Also, I thought I saw a thread about side marker socket replacement, but I cannot find it when I search. Can anyone help with that.

Thanks, all.

 

It is working fine. If you leave the door open or a window open, it works. If the doors and windows are closed, you sometimes have to gently push down on the hatch for it to close.

 

Just dropping it from 10 inches will not make it work. You have to pull it down with some force. It takes practice to get just the right force.

 

Rather than dropping it from about 10 inches, you might try just lowering it gently til it's down. Then apply pressure at the center, and once you reach the right spot, it should pull itself closed.

 

if i close the lid from 10 inches - car to air tight to close hatch

if the doors are closed i drop it from about 18" or more to close - usually just close from a foot or so then push hatch down lightly to close
(if the doors are open the hatch slams - not a good sound for me)

sounds normal to me....

 

With the C6, the hatch should work without having a door or window open. That issue was addressed and improved from the C5.
You need to accelerate the hatch with a slight 'slam', from about a foot from closure. It does take practice, and seems to improve with time and miles.

 

The intent of the latch, and the inside handle, was in response to owner's complaints that they were smudging up the car closing the hatch.
So the method you see described in the posts above is it- that's how you avoid the smudges....except that I still sometimes push down a little on the hatch to get it to close.

 

This technique will surely work, but the C6 hatch closure was improved over the C5 to avoid having to apply direct pressure to the lid and leaving fingerprints.

 

I have to do the same ..

 

It does take some practice to get it to shut properly when the windows are up. You do have to pull it down with the handle on the inside of the hatch top. I've closed mine often enough, I can do it about 19 times out of 20.

 

Don't make it too complicated. Grab the closing handle on the inside of the hatch (located on the right for a right hand-er). close it with some force so that the grab mechanism can grab and finish the closure.
Git-er-done

 

 

Thanks everyone!

 

This method works for me every time.

 

This works the best. Lower the hatch, apply some downward force and it will pull down snug. No slamming! Good luck.

 

It isn't designed to work that way either and even this method will give you inconsistent results. It isn't a hatch "pull down" as in Cadillac trunk lid. It is only meant as an "assist" to prevent you from having to slam it full force due to the windows/doors being closed, not a full pull-down to close the lid by itself. You are still supposed to throw it down with a light force as you would any non-assisted hatch. The only issue the power assist is supposed to be solving is the exagerated slamming force required when the windows/doors are closed. The best thing to do is pretend the assist isn't even there and that the hatch just requires a light "slamming" force as it would without the assist.

Mike

 

... exactly how I close mine even with the windows down.

 

Just a gentle slam works every time.

This approach means that you do not have to touch the hatch again.

 

Does it latch sometimes, but not others, even when you try to close it with a consistent method?

Often leave you with it half engaged/half not engaged?

Does it have you wondering whether to slam it hard, or drop it from higher, or just press firmly with fingers?

If all of the above is true, then yes, you have the correctly set up factory latch.

It's ""normal".

You know, I love my car, and didn't really think I had pet peeves, but I guess this is actually one of them.

If it really bugs you, you can try to be sure to leave a door open when operating the latch, because a major factor is the fact that as the hatch closes, it displaces a large volume of air, and the car is so tight it does not dispell it easily. This causes the latch to decelerate right when you would expect momentum to carry the thing through to closure.

Argh.


So the idea of grabbing that partially closed hatch with a hook or finger, and completing the closure by electronically cycling it to the fully closed position is not a horrible idea. But in our cars, the execution stinks. I don't know if the latch is too weak, the action too slow, the finger too short, or what -- but it would be interesting if somebody took this on as either an undergraduate engineering problem to resolve, or a forum member was to play with mods to see what could be done through experimentation.

I'd be willing to bet that just the right mod could overcome the irregular functioning of ALL C6 hatches.

If that is the worst of our worries, we are in pretty good shape!

 

With the doors and windows closed, mine will not latch unless I slam it pretty hard, and I do not believe that was intended nor is it good for the latch. I lower mine with the handle, and then push down gently until the assist pulls it down. Even though I have to touch the car, this is an improvement over the C5, which I either had to slam hard or lower and then push down rather sharply to get it to latch. The C6 assist allows gentle pressure as opposed to a violent slam or shove. Although it is not clear, the 2006 manual seems to say gentle push, not slam: