I forgot I had my tailgate down, hit a bump too hard, and the gate must have jumped up and came off the hinges. Didn't notice that until I hit the next bump too hard and BAM.

The cables held and shockingly enough nothing seems to be broken or even that dinged up where you can see it, the worst was a little dent in the black plastic bumper cover, where the bottom of the gate hit it, but the metal tabs on the ends of both tailgate cables bent and would no longer rotate to keep the cables clear as the gate closed. I bent them back until they moved freely and everything now seems to work.

My question is, would this impact / rebending of the tabs weaken them enough that I should preemptively replace the cables? I don't intend to try this again but if I'd been intending I wouldn't have done it the first time either.

 

Typically when you bend metal like that it stresses the metal and thus weakens it. The cables can't be too expensive I imagine so i'd probably just replace them for the "peace of mind" aspect.

 

You need to purchase a lottery ticket if you were lucky enough to have the slot in the gate hinge align properly to be ejected!

 

I had that happen with a company truck. I think it was around a 2010 model year and it bent the bottom corners of the tailgate quite noticeably.

Sounds like you were indeed lucky.

I have seen what happens as well when you forget your tailgate is down and back into something with it.

 

They're not made of paper, they're steel. Unless you can see cracks in them, they're fine.

 

Put some hose clamps around the brackets, it will keep them on and slow down a thief.

 

Thanks guys. I don't really want to spend the money on new cables if I don't have to but that hose clamp idea is great. Wish I'd done that before this happened.

 

You can also get a lock for the purpose that requires an oddly-shaped tool to remove.