‘24 Owners Who Removed Tailgate

[cr500rider]

I Just received my pigtails from Digikey and modified my connector and can also confirm the updated harness fixes the tailgate ajar issues. I ended up going with the 18 gauge and they easily slid into the connector. I soldered the ends and used some adhesive heat shrink to seal the ends before wrapping it back up with wire harness tape. Much easier and faster than waiting for Ford!

 

[Chadx]

More confirmation. Love it. The hive mind at it's best!

 

[Chadx]

@cr500rider To confirm, these were the pins with 18 gauge you used, correct? Same as the ones @Slippers posted?
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/molex/2163011202/14296905

 

[cr500rider]

@cr500rider To confirm, these were the pins with 18 gauge you used, correct?
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/molex/2163011202/14296905

Yes those are the ones. Just ordered Wed night and USPS delivered them today. When I ordered the default shipping was FEDEX but the drop down menu let my choose USPS and showed a faster shipping time for less cost.

 

[Chadx]

Thanks @cr500rider. I went ahead and ordered. Was going to get 6 rather than 3 so if I ran across a local that needed them, I'd have them, and then there was a price break at 10 so for dang near the same price, I grabbed 10. Ha. There was a $4.99 UPS option from MN to MT. So for $13.83, I have enough for me and two others on their way. Thanks for your work on this.

@Slippers You can remove me from your list and work with the next person in line. And thanks finding the smaller 18gauge versions and for your other work on this, too!

 

[Littlejeepr]

I now have a project for tomorrow night lol. I have some of the pins for the connector that should fit from some left over Chinese water tight connectors to make pig tails with. Have to see how it goes lol

 

[Littlejeepr]

I Just received my pigtails from Digikey and modified my connector and can also confirm the updated harness fixes the tailgate ajar issues. I ended up going with the 18 gauge and they easily slid into the connector. I soldered the ends and used some adhesive heat shrink to seal the ends before wrapping it back up with wire harness tape. Much easier and faster than waiting for Ford!

If that is all it is putting in the wires and having them twisted all together to ground out maybe while i make mine up I will make some looped extras while i am at it.

 

[andersondg]

I sent this info to my dealer and crickets. Just ordered the pigtails from DigiKey. Thank you to everyone for solving this problem!! Perhaps Ford should start outsourcing their engineering to this forum!

 

[Darko Marko]

Success! No more tailgate ajar warning or little red icon, or backup sensor disabled message either . Thanks everyone for your collaboration!

 

[cs0430]

At the risk of asking a dumb question, why do the added wires not go to corresponding pins on the other side of the harness?

 

[Slippers]

At the risk of asking a dumb question, why do the added wires not go to corresponding pins on the other side of the harness?

They don’t need to. One of the three pins is a ground. The other two are (presumably) inputs for the open/closed status. Tying them to ground makes the truck think the tailgate is closed.

 

[Chadx]

Agreed.
If there were two grounded pins available on the pickup-side of the white connector, an alternative would be to run the two pins needing ground (14 and 11) on the black connector to the corresponding white connector ports to pick up ground for each of the two slots needing ground. But, doing it as outlined in this thread is how the dealership tech fixed it and we are copying since the legwork is done. Also, opening one connector and adding three pins/wires and joining them is easier than opening two connectors and adding four pins with wires in between.

The open questions is what did Ford intended and how are the '23 pickup harnesses wired because they did not have this issue. No one with a '23 has posted images of their Tailgate Removal Harness so that is a bit of missing data on why theirs work and our '24 do not work.

 

[Littlejeepr]

Should have checked first lol but i went thru the trouble of putting the wires into my pigtail and did not need to. With my tailgate unplugged with and without the pig tail there is no tail gate ajar icon. I do get a rear sensor error but seems to be at random thou. With the tailgate plugged in it doesn’t light the tailgate open till fully open but that is probably a bubble style switch. So Fords must have did some sort of change in the later part of the production run. There must be a software change or something, then again my truck is having anchor shitshow lol of issues between the rear window switch and door harness being screwed up from the factory

 

[Chadx]

Should have checked first lol but i went thru the trouble of putting the wires into my pigtail and did not need to. With my tailgate unplugged with and without the pig tail there is no tail gate ajar icon. I do get a rear sensor error but seems to be at random thou. With the tailgate plugged in it doesn’t light the tailgate open till fully open but that is probably a bubble style switch. So Fords must have did some sort of change in the later part of the production run. There must be a software change or something, then again my truck is having anchor shitshow lol of issues between the rear window switch and door harness being screwed up from the factory

Interesting yours does not throw the tailgate ajar message, especially with no harness in it at all! If they changed to some type of bubble level that only triggers once tailgate is laying flat, that changes the meaning of the warning from Tailgate Ajar to Tailgate Open, which is less useful in my opinion. When I have the tailgate on, I want to know it is not fully closed (ajar) BEFORE it flies open driving down the highway and my cargo spills onto the roadway. Similar to how I want to know the passenger-side rear door is ajar rather than waiting until it is wide open to alert. Something suspect there.

What is the build month of your '24? My '24 was built November 2023.

 

[Littlejeepr]

Interesting yours does not throw the tailgate ajar message, especially with no harness in it at all! If they changed to some type of bubble level that only triggers once tailgate is laying flat, that changes the meaning of the warning from Tailgate Ajar to Tailgate Open, which is less useful in my opinion. When I have the tailgate on, I want to know it is not fully closed (ajar) BEFORE it flies open driving down the highway and my cargo spills onto the roadway. Similar to how I want to know the passenger-side rear door is ajar rather than waiting until it is wide open to alert. Something suspect there.

What is the build month of your '24? My '24 was built November 2023.

Built last week of April 2024 has to go back and look at the clips my buddy that works at ford sent me. I agree that an ajar message is better than wide open. Not sure maybe it’s a platt thing considering the power tailgate. I did just double check because i left the gate up, even with the gate put down then unplugged tailgate symbol goes away. Getting to go out for a ride now going to leave the gate unplugged with my modified tailgate delete pig tail installed. I also did notice that unlike my 22 that needed 5 caps for plugs this truck only needs 2 caps everything else is capped off already not sure if that is normal either.

 

[Chadx]

Built last week of April 2024 has to go back and look at the clips my buddy that works at ford sent me. I agree that an ajar message is better than wide open. Not sure maybe it’s a platt thing considering the power tailgate. I did just double check because i left the gate up, even with the gate put down then unplugged tailgate symbol goes away. Getting to go out for a ride now going to leave the gate unplugged with my modified tailgate delete pig tail installed. I also did notice that unlike my 22 that needed 5 caps for plugs this truck only needs 2 caps everything else is capped off already not sure if that is normal either.

The Platinum seems a different animal. The power tailgate lift likely contributes to the differences.

My Lariat tailgate harness has 5 connections; the two large plugs (black and white), two medium sized plugs, and one camera plug. When the tailgate is off, the first two get the harness in question ru between them and the latter three get blanks inserted.

 

[Littlejeepr]

The Platinum seems a different animal. The power tailgate lift likely contributes to the differences.

My Lariat tailgate harness has 5 connections; the two large plugs (black and white), two medium sized plugs, and one camera plug. When the tailgate is off, the first two get the harness in question ru between them and the latter three get blanks inserted.

In the bag I got the harness and 5 blanks, harness joins the large black plug to the large white one. Then one for the camera 2 pin the rest are already blocked off. Without the harness in place i get a back up sensor error. With it plugged in the sensor error warning is gone. I do seem to have all my camera views minus the tailgate one. I dont belive in my case the added pined wires are doing any harm. Will have to further investigate in my case then i can move onto the rear camera i need for the back of the camper lol

 

[Rustyshatz]

Has anybody completed the harness mod and restored function of backup camera?

 

[Chadx]

Has anybody completed the harness mod and restored function of backup camera?

Backup camera is not impacted by the Tailgate Ajar message. I installed a backup camera on my camper and it works fine even with this tailgate issue.

 

[Rustyshatz]

Backup camera is not impacted by the Tailgate Ajar message. I installed a backup camera on my camper and it works fine even with this tailgate issue.

did you plug in camera at original location where the tailgate camera was plugged in?