Garage opener issue

[Donald]

It's cold and maybe that's it, but I cleaned my garage and wife is putting her car in the garage.

Sometimes when I try and open the door goes most of the way up and stops. Press the remote and it goes down, press again and it goes all the way up.

On the way down it goes to about 6" from being closed and reverses. I can hold the button and get it closed.

It use to work fine.

I am thinking the lubrication of the door rollers may be an issue.

 

[The_Jeff]

You are probably right.

There's a sensor that kills the motor and flashes the light if it hits an obstacle. Though there is an adjustment to make it less sensitive, the right fix is lubing it to get it right.

Also all your springs are still intact and functional? Switch it to manual mode and see how it goes.

 

[SatinSilver]

How old is the opener? I had one do this last year and we just put a new one in. It was either that or replace an expensive component that I forget the name of the part at the moment. For a little more a new unit could be installed. Plus the old one was 17 yrs old.

 

[AandPDan]

Rule out the door first.

Disconnect the opener and open the door manually. How does it move?

It should stay where you leave it if the spring tension is correct. It shouldn't bind in any position.

 

[Driz]

Yup check the rollers and oil them. See if they are snagging on where the rollers cross where the tracks piece together too. Sometimes they get bent by twisted rollers. While you are at it take a look at how straight and tight the rollers mounts are to the door. Sometimes things get bent loose or twisted out of alignment by dragging rollers. Also if it's old take a glance at the door springs up there above the door. They will break sometime and get weaker with age and use.

 

[spasm3]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
You are probably right.

There's a sensor that kills the motor and flashes the light if it hits an obstacle. Though there is an adjustment to make it less sensitive, the right fix is lubing it to get it right.

Also all your springs are still intact and functional? Switch it to manual mode and see how it goes.



Originally Posted By: AandPDan
Rule out the door first.

Disconnect the opener and open the door manually. How does it move?

It should stay where you leave it if the spring tension is correct. It shouldn't bind in any position.


This!

 

[Donald]

I assume the rollers rotate on the shafts, but the shafts do not really rotate on the bracket.

 

[JTK]

Obviously the rollers/tracks are important, but proper spring tension even more so. Like said, how does it feel when you work the door manually with the disconnect pulled?

 

[Inspecktor]

My 20+ year old screw drive does the same thing during winter unless I clean out the grease and relube with oil. As it gets older, heavy grease seems to be too thick to allow correct operation.

 

[cheech279]

Like others have said, try manually opening and closing the door. If its free and smooth, just do some cleaning and lubricating. In cold and damp weather, sometimes I have to adjust the UP or DOWN force on my Chamberlain door openers. EZPZ.

 

[SZR48207]

The laser alignment could be getting bumped if there is a lot of vibration during operation. Those would be worth checking, and while you are down there you can vacuum around them and lightly clean the lenses.

The other possibility is the control board is going bad. My home came with a Craftsman (rebranded Chamberlain) belt drive opener and it started to act just like yours one day. It would reset halfway during operation, sometimes it wouldn't open or close, etc.

Took some time but I narrowed it down to vibration, and then that led me to find the cracked cold solder joints on the main board. Basically enough vibration would cause intermittent shorts in power and make the opener all wonky.

Brought out the soldering iron and redid the joints that I could do safely and it has worked great ever since.

It makes me wonder to this day, just how many people replaced their openers for this issue when the fix only takes about 30 minutes.

 

[Duffyjr]

Mine was doing the same thing and finally the top wheel on one side started coming out off the track. I work with a lady whose husband works at Overhead door so next time I seen him I mentioned this to him. He told me more that likely it was dirty and needed cleaning and to go get some PB Blaster garage door lube at TSC and spray the tracks and wheels and then wipe the dirt out of the tracks and hit it again with the lube. So I did and it didn't work. I noticed that it was jerking to the point one side would get hung up then the other side and back and forth like this until it got so bad the wheel would come out of the track but it would still close and open.

What I did figure out is the wheels that guide the cables from the spring to the bottom of the door where they take a 90 degree turn were the culprit, so now twice a year I hit those with the blaster and haven't had problems since.

 

[TurboFiat124]

Originally Posted By: Donald
It's cold and maybe that's it, but I cleaned my garage and wife is putting her car in the garage.

Sometimes when I try and open the door goes most of the way up and stops. Press the remote and it goes down, press again and it goes all the way up.

On the way down it goes to about 6" from being closed and reverses. I can hold the button and get it closed.

It use to work fine.

I am thinking the lubrication of the door rollers may be an issue.


What brand is this?

I recently had an issue with my Wayne Dalton garage door opener. It would go all the way to the bottom then go up. Sometimes I would have to cycle it two or three times before it finally decided to stay down.

My wife claims it would go up on it's own for no apparent reason even after the door was closed. I don't think the later was the case.

I came to the conclusion that the sensor that detects something underneath the door was at fault. Not to be confused with the infrared sensors that detect an obstacle as the door is closing. There is a second sensor that detects if something is laying on the ground under the door.

The "fix" was to turn the sensitivity knob on the control panel to maximum. I haven't had any problems since.

By the way. Wayne Dalton's tech support sucks. if you go to their website looking for tech support, forget it. They redirect you to one of their dealers in your area based on your zip code. I bought mine from Lowes.

I have two Hormann garage door openers in my garage. I've heard people say these are good garage door openers but I've had these things get out of sync, not once but twice. What happens is the door will go all the way up but when it closes it can lack anywhere from 2 to 6 inches from closing all the way.

The "fix" for this brand is to reset the controller's memory. There is a button on side you have to press and go through this procedure and it goes through like 2 cycles then corrects itself. If it's a Hormann, I can tell you how to reset it. But I've written the instructions on the inside of the garage door with a magic marker!