Grand Cherokee powered tailgate

[pvantiel]

Recently I managed to completely pull out one of the roof buttons where the rear crossbar of my roof rack is attached to the roof, I forgot that I had a length a timber strapped on and mistakenly pushed the automatic open switch. I have done this before but in the past when a certain pressure is reached it has alarmed and stopped, not so this time!
The timber was strapped on the left side of the roof and hit the spoiler bar on top of the tailgate, when I heard the crunching sound I just assumed it was the spoiler breaking up. I've since done endless amounts of testing and found that applying pressure when it's being raised anywhere else on the tailgate stops it dead, but NOT on the spoiler.
I have since removed the existing channels and fitted an Off Road Animal channel which I wish I'd known about a long time ago, can't understand why Jeep has fitted 12 roof buttons and only are 4 are used when fitting crossbars. Would be interested to know if anybody else has had this unfortunate experience. I've read where some people have removed the fuse which operates the lifting mechanism but it appears this also disables the electric lock.

[Grippy]

Wow that's unfortunate.
Did you re-,fix the ripped out roof button?
How bad is the damage?

[pvantiel]

Yep, took off the standard Jeep rails and hammered the roof button back in. Fitted brand new rails which are made by Off Road Animal, they follow the roof contour and bolt into the 12 existing roof buttons, I applied silicone around all of these first. Then mounted my existing Rhino Rack crossbars onto the new rails, holes are already there, load rating is now 120kg and spreads it around the load bearing part of the roof, it's worth checking out their website, i also have one of their nudge bars.