The previous owner of my '73 replaced the manual tailgate with a tailgate from a later model with the power window. He never wired it up to work, and I don't have a key for it.

It's gonna rain here this Friday, how can I get my window to roll up before it rains? Should I just buy the switch and wire it up? Can it get the tailgate re-keyed? How does it wire up? HELP!

Factory electric tailgates have a switch in the dash that runs the tail gate if you take the tailgate apart it shouldn't be that hard to figure out how to wire in a switch.

There should be a connector coming out of the tailgate. IIRC, 3 connectors, one hot, one up, and one down. I think the hot one is orange, and the others are blue and brown. Just hotwire one terminal at a time, until you find the "up" wire. This way you can at least get the window up before it rains, then worry about wiring a switch.

Pete

So should I just hook up my battery hot to the red, and ground out the others to see if it goes up?

thanks

No it grounds off the body. You just need to apply power from the battery to the one wire that controls up. The reason one is hot is for the key switch. Its probably going to be real hard to rekey that switch. Might just be easier to go to GM and get a new key and switch. Then just run a hot wire from the battery to that one single (red or orange) wire. Then if you want to get real tricky you can work on getting a switch up front.

Thanks, I'll let you know how it works out.

What the newbie said. :D It grounds off the body. And it is nice to have the switch in the gate, especially if the motor is weak or the cable is gunked up/kinked and you have to help it up.

Pete

I called my local Chevy dealer, and they want $55 for a tailgate switch with a new key, and and $37 for the interior switch, not bad. I'll eventually end up getting those, but in the mean time I need to get that window up, the new forecast says rain Thursday!

Thanks!

especially if the motor is weak or the cable is gunked up/kinked and you have to help it up.

I knew I couldnt be the only one. :)

I fought mine for years thinking the motor was toast, then finally put a cable in it and it helped a lot. Wasn't too $$$ at the dealer.

Pete