Limiting Rear Hatch Travel

[RX400h]

Has anyone modified your rear hatch travel so that the hatch door doesn't extend so high in the air? If I let it go all the way up, it'll smack my garage door. It looks like Lexus let this issue slip through the cracks.

To those of you who have not tried it yet, be forewarned! I don't want to hear about anyone scratching or dinging their RX doors.

[LexRexBlue]

I had the same concern because my garage is low. Unfortunately the service manager told me that it can't be adjusted. I'd have to hold the door to stop it. Ugh!

[LexKid630]

HaHaHA i learned that with my 99 rx!! Yeah it does go up very high, and it hit my garage door too LOL It didn't hit too hard so there wasn't even a scratch of damage, but still....I think they should make it adjustable too...

[LexRexBlue]

My '99 RX doesn't hit my garage, but I noticed that the 330 loaner does, so I know the 400h will. One day I forgot the garage door was open and went to back out my RX with the hatch open. The garage door was locked into my rear windshield wiper! There was a hairline scratch on the hatch. I had to use the emergency red handle on the garage door to free it. That was an experience.

[RX400h]

My '99 RX doesn't hit my garage, but I noticed that the 330 loaner does, so I know the 400h will. One day I forgot the garage door was open and went to back out my RX with the hatch open. The garage door was locked into my rear windshield wiper! There was a hairline scratch on the hatch. I had to use the emergency red handle on the garage door to free it. That was an experience.

←

One day, we left our van's hatch open and hit the button to close the garage door. Before I could reverse the door, the hatch door already had a scratch in it.

Lexkid, it looks like your garage is even lower than LexRex's. I need to get my hands on a service manual to investigate further.......

[Dave_02RX300]

Who's got room in the garage!? Mine has to sit on the driveway.

[RX400h]

Who's got room in the garage!?  Mine has to sit on the driveway.

←

Don't feel too bad, you probably have no basement! We do have a neighbors up the street who park their BMW X5 outside. However, even my 89 Mazda MX6 GT sits in the garage. I grew up not having a garage, so I vowed to do the best I could to keep all my vehicles out of the rain.

[Dave_02RX300]

I don't show it in my profile, but yes, I am in San Diego too. No basement like we had in Chicago, and it's a "2-car" garage. Meaning it's a 1.5 car garage. The Oddysey get's first dibs, and the 0.5 side gets my 8 bicycles, including two Litespeeds.

[patt]

We have the same garage problem. The Rx400H door barely touches our garage door when both are open. I can get in when the garage door is closed, but I don't like to think about what would happen if someone else opened the garage door from the outside while the Rx door was open. :cries:

We have a few options:

install a roll-up door, but I think that wouldn't look as good on our house as our existing wood door.

clear away some stuff stored in the garage which would leave room to pull forward far enough that Rx door would be clear of the garage door.

limit travel on the garage door - I wonder if there is a way to do that - if it opened to a slight angle, I think the RX would still easily clear it driving in and it would gain the couple of inches we need for clearance - I don't know if that is possible with our garage door opener.

back-in - for us this may be the best option.

I tried backing into the garage last night. With the good side mirrors and the backup camera it was reasonably easy to get positioned well. Actually, in some ways it may be easier than pulling in forward - because of the slant of our driveway, I loose sight of our other car that is now relegated to a parking spot on the drive during forward pull-in. That wouldn't happen on back in. Getting nice clearance for back access and room to walk between the front of the car and the garage door would still require a little garage cleaning but not quite as much.

[RX400h]

My garage doors are roll-up and the RX hatch door will hit them. I certainly wouldn't mind backing in but with a wife who is nervous about driving the RX in the rain, getting her to back in would be like pulling teeth - impossible! The best answer, I think, is to limit the hatch travel. However, because it is a power-assisted design, limiting the cylinder travel may not do the trick.

I'll have to investigate further.....

[patt]

Our garage may have a little extra height on the door - partly because it was built for a tilt up door. I'm pretty sure that a roll-up installed in it would clear. In your garage, it may be possible to get a new roll-up or a different track installation that would allow the door to clear. Years ago in a former house we were able to get a roll-up installed that allowed our full-sized van to park in the garage.

Let us know if you find a way to limit the door travel. We aren't tall enough to need the existing opening and having the option would be nice. With the door open, I can just reach the close button and I'm not sure if I could grab the door for manual closing without jumping a little.

I hope a bit of experience gets your wife more comfortable. I had the Rx400H out in the rain (the chance to test it out made me glad for our late rains this year). Since it had been dry for a while, there was the chance of extra slick oil and water conditions on the streets. The performance was wonderful. I didn't feel any tendency to slip - it felt the same as driving on dry streets.

The auto-sensing windshield wipers did a good job as well.

[blake918]

My neighbor used to have a late model Olds mini van that would send the hatch right in to the garage door. He fixed the problem quickly and cheaply by attaching a piece of foam to the garage door where the hatch would contact. Something to think about...

[LexKid630]

My '99 RX doesn't hit my garage, but I noticed that the 330 loaner does, so I know the 400h will. One day I forgot the garage door was open and went to back out my RX with the hatch open. The garage door was locked into my rear windshield wiper! There was a hairline scratch on the hatch. I had to use the emergency red handle on the garage door to free it. That was an experience.

←

One day, we left our van's hatch open and hit the button to close the garage door. Before I could reverse the door, the hatch door already had a scratch in it.

Lexkid, it looks like your garage is even lower than LexRex's. I need to get my hands on a service manual to investigate further.......

←

my garage's are high enough for me :P When you have 5 of them, you have limited space. Especially when you only have 2.5 acres of land to put a 7500 square foot house, 1 tennis court, 1 swimming pool and a basketball court. Oh and i forgot; the shore of the ocean. ;)

[RX400h]

my garage's are high enough for me  :P  When you have 5 of them, you have limited space. Especially when you only have 2.5 acres of land to put a 7500 square foot house, 1 tennis court, 1 swimming pool and a basketball court. Oh and i forgot; the shore of the ocean. ;)

←

Hey, I can sell my house here in CA and buy a 100-acre plot with six tennis courts, a bowling alley, four swimming pools and a guset mansion in Arizona. However, I'll take this puny 3-car garage house and its surrounding weather any day! (at least before I retire!) B)

[LexKid630]

my garage's are high enough for me  :P  When you have 5 of them, you have limited space. Especially when you only have 2.5 acres of land to put a 7500 square foot house, 1 tennis court, 1 swimming pool and a basketball court. Oh and i forgot; the shore of the ocean. ;)

←

Hey, I can sell my house here in CA and buy a 100-acre plot with six tennis courts, a bowling alley, four swimming pools and a guset mansion in Arizona. However, I'll take this puny 3-car garage house and its surrounding weather any day! (at least before I retire!) B)

←

Yeah; rhode island weather is horrible it's so colddd; around 55 today

[cnynctry]

Has anyone modified your rear hatch travel so that the hatch door doesn't extend so high in the air? If I let it go all the way up, it'll smack my garage door. It looks like Lexus let this issue slip through the cracks.

To those of you who have not tried it yet, be forewarned! I don't want to hear about anyone scratching or dinging their RX doors.

←

Maybe a plastic coverd wire with loops on each end. If it was made to the correct length and attached to the door and the frame. this would teather the door from entending all the way up. Something like what is on the tailgate of a pickup. Wouldn't have to be that heavy duty to limit the door travel.

[patt]

A mechanical limiting device such as the suggested wire may not work with the power door lifter. I believe that, when the door attempts to open and hits mechanical resistance, it responds to the resistance by reversing and closes.

So LexKid - it sounds like you could host the Lexus Owners Club RX400H retreat. :D

[RX400hGirl]

This may sound silly, but I might buy a foam pad and attach it to the garage door right where the top of the RX door would touch. Then I would manually open and gently raise the lid until it touches.

If I do that, I'll take pics and post em for you to see.

[RX400h]

This may sound silly, but I might buy a foam pad and attach it to the garage door right where the top of the RX door would touch.  Then I would manually open and gently raise the lid until it touches. 

If I do that, I'll take pics and post em for you to see.

←

This is what we call a "workaround". It prevents catastrophe but doesn't solve the problem at its roots. Still, it'll do for the time being. I think Patt may be right in that the mechanism that opens and closes the hatch needs to be limited. Otherwise, we could replace the pneumatic cylinders with shorter versions. This would work if it were not for the "power" part of the hatch.

[scoobie]

This may sound silly, but I might buy a foam pad and attach it to the garage door right where the top of the RX door would touch.  Then I would manually open and gently raise the lid until it touches. 

If I do that, I'll take pics and post em for you to see.

←

This is what we call a "workaround". It prevents catastrophe but doesn't solve the problem at its roots. Still, it'll do for the time being. I think Patt may be right in that the mechanism that opens and closes the hatch needs to be limited. Otherwise, we could replace the pneumatic cylinders with shorter versions. This would work if it were not for the "power" part of the hatch.

←

I think if you can shorten the cylinder travel that would solve the problem. I believe the power assist is active only at the beginning to get the hatch moving.

There is a simple way to test whether the "power" operation causes any problems, use the power feature to open the hatch and use your hands to hold it before it opens all the way up and see if it stays put or tries to reverse direction.

In any case, having to replace ot adjust the cylinder is too dramatic a change for my taste, I was hoping for a 'software' fix but it seems that is not possible.

[blake918]

This is what we call a "workaround". It prevents catastrophe but doesn't solve the problem at its roots. Still, it'll do for the time being. I think Patt may be right in that the mechanism that opens and closes the hatch needs to be limited. Otherwise, we could replace the pneumatic cylinders with shorter versions. This would work if it were not for the "power" part of the hatch.

←

Haha, that's funny. I guess you're right; it's techincally a workaround just as changing the struts on the rear lift gate(which could open another can of worms with your warranty and the motor for the door) would be too, so let's briefly take a look at the root cause. The Lexus is performing just as the engineers designed it to. The problem at its roots is your garage; it's just not tall enough to accommodate the car. You're garage is the limiting factor, not your RX. So, the only "real fix" would be rebuilding your garage. Personally, I'd gladly take the $5 foam pad to save $5k-$10k on garage modifications and the nightmare of having to deal with contractors.

[patt]

For those who already have a roll-up door, the garage fix may cost far less than $5K. I know in a past house we were able to change from a flat door to a roll-up for less than that. It may be that a different track for the roll up or an adjustment to the way the existing track is hung would do it.

My husband and I even discussed the possibility of limiting travel on our garage door opener so that our solid door would open to a slightly slanted position. I think that could be done enough to get the extra inch or two and still leave the bottom of the door high enough for the RX to drive in. But it seems like a kludge and I worry that the garage door and opener mechanism would have more stress on it in a slanted position than it has when it can open to the flat position which was designed to be a stable position for the door and springs.

BTW, I'm pretty sure the power door opener is working all the way up and not just to start the movement. The first time I pulled into our garage, I activated the rear door opener without thinking. The RX rear door opened and then closed itself - which I assume was due to detecting contact with the garage door. There wasn't any damage and I wasn't interested in repeating the experiment. I had already seen RX400H's mention of the problem but I was in a hurry and forgot that it might be a problem.

[patt]

This may sound silly, but I might buy a foam pad and attach it to the garage door right where the top of the RX door would touch.  Then I would manually open and gently raise the lid until it touches. 

If I do that, I'll take pics and post em for you to see.

←

What I would think carefully about before using this kind of solution is what happens when the garage door is activated with the Rx door open. If you are the only person who has an opener for the door, this might not be a problem. But if someone else (e.g. husband, kids) might come home when the RX door is open and open or close the garage door what would happen? Especially if the garage door is a roll-up type, would the RX door edge be above the garage door edge so that the garage door would run into it? Would the garage door scrape against the RX door perhaps past the edge of the pad?

Have you tried backing in? After a couple of times, I'm finding it really comfortable to back in. The tilting mirrors are great. For me, I think it is actually easier than going in forward. In our particular situation (a fairly steep driveway up to the garage with our Camry parked on the right), it actually seems easier than going in forward. When I go in forward, there is a part of the driveway where my nose is tilted up enough that I can't see the Camry on my right. When I back in, the two critical points (edge of the garage opening and the Camry) are clearly visable in the mirrors all the way in and leaving the Camry is on the driver's side so I can see it.

[RX400h]

This is what we call a "workaround". It prevents catastrophe but doesn't solve the problem at its roots. Still, it'll do for the time being. I think Patt may be right in that the mechanism that opens and closes the hatch needs to be limited. Otherwise, we could replace the pneumatic cylinders with shorter versions. This would work if it were not for the "power" part of the hatch.

←

Haha, that's funny. I guess you're right; it's techincally a workaround just as changing the struts on the rear lift gate(which could open another can of worms with your warranty and the motor for the door) would be too, so let's briefly take a look at the root cause. The Lexus is performing just as the engineers designed it to. The problem at its roots is your garage; it's just not tall enough to accommodate the car. You're garage is the limiting factor, not your RX. So, the only "real fix" would be rebuilding your garage. Personally, I'd gladly take the $5 foam pad to save $5k-$10k on garage modifications and the nightmare of having to deal with contractors.

←

To me, the root cause is Toyota not taking into consideration the average usable garage height. Our Nissan Quest van's rear hatch comes within one inch of the garage door. However, a 6 foot two person loading or unloading groceries may very well conk his head on the hatch. More than likely, (now that I think of it) Toyota figured that the advantage of head clearance outweighed the disadvantage of being able to open the hatch in a standard-sized garage. Hey, I'm giving them the benefit of a doubt here!

Patt, I'll bet that if one were to open the hatch manually, there would not be an issue with resting it against a soft padding that is attached to the door. Closing the garage door while the hatch is in this position is another matter. I did this once while our van hatch was open and was rewarded with a couple of scratches. This happened despite the 1-inch clearance between the open hatch and the open garage door.

[patt]

RX400H, I agree about the pad. As long as the pad is good enough there shouldn't be any problem with manually opening the RX door up to the pad. It is the garage door getting opened or closed with the RX hatch open that I would worry about.

I'm pretty short and my husband is average height so we would have been fine with the RX hatch not opening so high, but I expect the reason it was done that way was to keep from damaging tall people. As a vertically challanged person, it is a good thing power close is available. If it wasn't, I'd probably want to attach a grab loop of some kind to the door because when open I can just reach the close button on the open door. Grabbing the door to pull it closed would be a challange.