Converting tailgate to manual lift
 

The upper ball mount has snapped off leaving the ball portion in the hydraulic piston mount. I've never been a big fan of the auto lift tailgate anyway so I'd to covert the tailgate to manual. I did a search and couldn't find any information on if and how this can be done.

Has anyone done this or know where information on how to do it can be found?

The other option I see is to replace the upper ball mount. I've removed whats left of the old one from the car but the ball itself is stuck inside the mount/housing on the hydraulic piston. There is no way to pop it out with the piston still on the car. I think with the piston off i could drill a hole in the backside of the housing and push the ball out with a punch.Then install a new ball mount

Could anyone tell me how to remove the hydraulic piston? Would I need to drain the hydraulic fluid in doing so.
Thanks

The previous owner of my car converted to manual and I went out and bought a pump and hydraulic arm to convert back since I hate having buttons that don’t work.

In in my case, they cut the hydraulic lines off of the arm and shoved them back into the hole they came out of, above the headliner. They also bought an oem trim piece to cover the hole. They pulled the pump out from the left side of the car and put the ends of the hydraulic lines in a plastic bag. Then they put a regular strut on the driver side, same as what is on passenger side. ISTA showed an error about the angle position sensor but everything worked just fine.

If I were you I would do the same thing. Don’t have to remove the pump, but you would at least want to disconnect it. There is an HKL unit under the spare tire and it might be possible that you could just unplug that as it can be annoying unplugging the pump since you have to remove lots of trim. Top Hydraulics has a good pdf showing how to get to the pump. I followed that.