Inspect & Disconnect Old Latch

our problem check it out evidently when i shut the tailgate this thing just came plopping out so it's not in good shape these two tabs are something that normally breaks we want to make sure that we've got good functionality uh on both ends right here so this tab right here is spring loaded just like so and it needs to work appropriately so i'm going to pull this to give it a test yep no problem that side works we'll go on over here make sure this side works yep works good a lot of times these plastic tabs are the problem that's what's gone bad but in this case it's not the plastic tabs it's actually the entire apparatus here so the way we remove these i just did one without telling you so you just press with your thumb right here you can use a screwdriver or wrench if you want to press just like that that releases that tab and then out comes the bad part so that's part of the bad part and i guess it just slipped out right there next thing we're going to do is pull these two screws out right here