3rd Gen Tailgate/Rear Hatch Question

Hi All - I am looking at buying a 3rd Gen for the improved motor/interior to the 2nd gen. However, I love the tailgate/liftgate options on the 1st and 2nd gens.

My understanding is that the 3rd gen just has one large hatch door. Has anyone ever swapped the rear set up from a 2nd gen onto a 3rd gen or fabbed their own lift gate/hatch combo? I know the 80 series landcruisers have a simliar liftgate/hatch set up.

Wasnt able to find much recent information on it. Here is the set up I desire for my soon-to-be 3rd gen (not my photos):

 

I have not seen anyone do it. Because the 1st and 2nd gens are much narrower you cant swap tailgates.

There are several problems, the wires for everything come in next to the hinge at the top. So you’d have to move the wires for the window motor to the bottom since you still need the motor. Don’t forget rear defrost wires too, and rear wiper wires.

Then theres the hatch opener, on 2nd and first gens it was a non-locking handle on the inside that you can only reach when the glass is down. On the third gen it’s on the outside so if someone doesn’t know what they’re doing (like someone borrowing the vehicle or a random person trying the latch when you left it unlocked), they can try swinging the tail gate down when the glass is still up, breaking the glass. I mean you can probably do this on a 2nd gen too if you come from the inside, but in normal use it’s unlikely.

The land cruiser is a simpler idiot proof design because the upper glass half flips up and the bottom half folds down, but you’d lose the 4runners drop down back window.

Then there is the window track which is fixed to the sidewalls of the car on a 2nd gen. The easiest way to replicate this would be to cut the hatch in half where the window line starts and weld it in place. But you have to worry about the brake light. The 2nd gens (that came with one) had lazily installed on the roof as a bump. But since it’s inside the hatch of the 3rd gens you’d have to find a way to weld the top part of the hatch in place without melting this wire. Also you’d need to repaint this seam.

There are other problems I can think of like the interior trim on the tailgate of a 3rd gen not being designed to take the weight of you sitting on it, whether the water drainage system will work in a different configuration, if the rear bumper is going to be in your way when you drop the tailgate, if there is a place to mount hinges strong enough to support the weight of the lower tailgate plus extra. But thats just a few.