Hot garage door opener

[Jimmy9190]

I put a Genie belt drive opener on my garage door 2 months ago. It worked fine. 2 nights ago I smelled something in the garage like an electrical motor that was running hot. I checked the opener and on one side and on the top of the motor it was hot to the touch. Not so hot I could not keep my hand on it, but it was hot. Opener worked fine as usual yesterday but last night the motor felt even hotter than Thursday. I called Genie, who suggested to swap the motor for a new one at Home Depot. HD was great about exchanging it for me today. Problem is, this opener feels hot too. On the top and side of the motor housing.

Anyone else have this problem? I had used a 20 foot extension cord to bring power to the opener on the original installation. Today I even tried plugging the opener in a different and a little closer outlet, and it's still hot to the touch. I am stumped.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[tom slick]

is your balance spring set correctly?

 

[labman]

Does the door operate easily by hand? If not, you may be over working it. You need to have the track properly alined and as mentioned, the springs adjusted properly. I think it is supposed to stay put about 2/3 of the way up.

Be careful with extension cords. Make sure it is heavy enough for the load. It would be better to set an outlet for it.

 

[Warstud]

Why the extension cord? Mine has a it's own cord that plugs directly into an outlet. If you have to use an extension cord, use the shortest possible.

 

[94MaxGXE]

It's not the extension cord. The motor is never turning off. The limit switch is not adjusted properly.

 

[labman]

You should still have the directions. Try loosening the clutch.

 

[Jimmy9190]

I used an extension cord because both outlets in the garage ceiling are on a switch in the kitchen. It's the same switch that controls the lights in the garage. The extension cord I used is an extra heavy duty yellow one which should be a good enough wire gauge for the distance to the wall outlet, about 8 feet across the ceiling and another 4 feet down the wall to the outlet.

The door operates perfectly smooth, with or without the door opener trolley engaged. I can raise or lower it with one hand very easily. The springs and the tracks are all inline, lubed well and in good shape.

I think there could be a possibility the down limit is not set right. Maybe it needs to be a little less than it is, but when I closed the door manually with the opener as soon as it "firmly touched the ground" as it says in the manual, that is the position where I set the limit. I can hear the motor click when the door closes, which made me think the motor was turning off.

Tomorrow I will re-set the down limit a little less and see if that fixes the problem. That makes good sense. For tonight I'll leave the opener unplugged.

Thanks everybody for the help here.

 

[94MaxGXE]

Well? How did it go? Is it fixed?

 

[Jimmy9190]

Well, I readjusted the closing force setting and reset the close limit just a hair higher and it still was warm. Not hot like before, but warm to the touch on top of the motor housing. Closing force is just a shade higher than half way, opening force is even less. I can also hear a humming in the motor if I put my ear to the side of it. The noise is present even if the garage door is not moving.

So I called Genie last weekend, spent about half an hour on the phone with them. The tech went and got a motor the same model as mine and plugged it in on his desk. As we talked, he said that one was warming up too. He also said that particular model has a huge transformer for a half horse unit, and the transformer has power all the time, which is what causes the humming noise.

So, the warm motor and humming noise are normal. I do live in Florida and it gets pretty hot up around the ceiling in my garage, too. I think what could have caused the first motor to get so hot and the second one to run warm was I had a pulley out of line and the cable had slipped out and was riding along the outside edge of the pulley, which probably caused the motor to work harder than necessary. I didn't see the pulley problem until last week.

This one has worked perfectly since I set the limits and force settings. It's very quiet. And the people at Genie were very good about helping me with it over the phone. Home Depot was great too. They even gave me another brand new entire opener in an unopened box because all they needed was the original defective motor to return it to Genie for a store credit. So if anything else breaks on it, I have the spare parts to fix that too. HD was outstanding about exchanging it for me. My gf and I made it a point to find the store manager and tell him what a great job the Customer Service woman had done.

 

[94MaxGXE]

Home Depot, Genie, great customer service. Now that's a good report. Thanks for the followup.