corneileous
Senior Member
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2016
- Posts
- 6,852
- Reaction score
- 3,918
- Location
- Podunkyville, OK
- Ram Year
- 2018 Ram 1500 Limited 4X4
- Engine
- Hemi 5.7
Hopefully your dealer can help you figure it out but even though it sounds like they might have, for some silly reason made several different designs of tailgate handles, they all three should work on every tailgate and shouldn’t require different part numbers. Like, for example on the fourth gens, there was only two different styles of tailgate and the reason why was because one tailgate was stamped for the ram head logo to go right in the center of it below the latch handle and the other one had a whole bunch of alignment holes stamped in the center of it to accommodate the large “R A M” letters.I don't think it would use the same handle. On a tailgate with a keyed handle, you have to pull the handle out maybe an inch to physically move the latching bars that hold it shut. On my electronic-only tailgate handle, I barely have to touch it and the tailgate unlatches. Not much more pressure than you have to use to push the buttons on your fob. It's basically just a push-button bar that indents maybe 1/8 inch and activates the actuator to withdraw the latching bars.
I am going to contacvt the dealer about it though. Maybe they'll just trade the manual locking tailgate for mine, mine being worth way more than a locking one.
By the way, I called up the parts house for some random Dodge dealer but without knowing your vin number, she really couldn’t help me out all that much and most of those online Mopar parts stores that I told you about earlier don’t do a very good job at describing the differences between all the different parts because for your truck, there’s a lot of different part numbers when it comes to tailgate handle.