Replacing my garage door opener

[SaratogaJJ]

Hello all,

I am faced with a garage door opener that is seemingly at the end of its natural life. When you push the remote button, the motor starts and turns, but the door doesn't open.

I've removed the casing to more closely inspect it, and my non-professional diagnosis is that the plastic gears that translate the torque from the motor to turn the chain drive sprocket are all stripped. (The many tiny plastic bits and shavings inside the casing is what tipped me off.)

I'd say the unit is maybe 10 years old - best guess. It's a Chamberlain 1/2 hp model.

It seems pretty straightforward; I'm considering replacing it myself - most likely with a comparable Chamberlain model - ut wanted to know if there are any pitfalls that I might need to concern myself about, or if this is a job that appears, on it surface, to be deceptively easy, but turns out to be lot more difficult.

Thanks in advance for all ideas, tips, hints, and warnings.

 

[Gooserider]

Don't know about Chamberlain, but for Sears units, it is possible to purchase just the replacement gear set... Unless the motor is also acting toast-like, it is a lot cheaper just to rebuild the transmisison in the thing and keep using it... We have a Crapsman opener, and it stripped out several years ago - to buy a new opener was about $150, the gears were about $25 - replacing them took an hour or two, most of which was getting the unit up and down from the ceiling.

There are a number of adjustments that can be made on the door to minimize the amount of strain that the opener sees, and according to the guy at the Sears parts counter, doing so will GREATLY increase the life of the opener...

Another tip - if you have an opener with a light in it, you probably find that it eats lightbulbs... Ours did, including the specific application "high vibration opener bulbs"... What I found is that it's the vibration that does them in, and there is an easy fix... Get a basic ceramic ceiling fixture, a cheap extension cord, and one of those little adapters that screws into a light socket to make it a two prong outlet - optionally get a 2-1 "Y" bulb adapter.

Cut the female plug off the extension cord and wire it to the ceramic ceiling fixture, screw the fixture to the ceiling. Put the socket adapter in the socket on the opener, and plug the fixture cord into it. Optionally put the "Y" adapter in the fixture so that you will have two bulbs (use bulbs of different ages) for redundancy. You will now find bulbs lasting for years instead of months...

Gooserider

 

[flyingcow]

Goose, love your light bulb idea! Aggravates it me to no end, when I don't think of the simple ways to solve a problem. Went thru 2 of the special bulbs before i said to heck with it! Thanks!

 

[velvetfoot]

Greetings from Sand Lake.
I think it's something you could do, especially since you already have an existing installation.
The compact flourescents in my Chamberlain have lasted 3 years.

Weird thing for me is that on our 3 car garage, the two end remotes open the doors from far away, where the one in the middle most days needs you to get pretty close. I say most days 'cause some days it's just as sensitive as the others. I've tried jiggling the antenna.

 

[BrotherBart]

They are easy to install. I have done three of them over the years. Just be sure two people work on it. I did all of mine alone but it would have been a lot easier to have another set of hands when it came time to raise the unit up to the ceiling and attach it.

 

[dgold]

May or may not matter to you, but I believe Chamberlain makes the units for Sears.

 

[fbelec]

i don't know if you are opening a single door or a double size door so i would suggest a 3/4 horse if it is a double door type. also you mite want to try opening the door by hand and see just how heavy it feels. i say this because if it feels really heavy you need new springs. the springs do all the work in opening the doors. if the springs are worn out you will most likely break the new opener or gear set which ever you install.

 

[Gooserider]

A heavy door doesn't always mean new springs are needed - you may just need to retension the ones you have. Also look at all your cables, and their pulleys, door hinges, etc... It is a good idea to hit all the moving parts on the door with a good spray lube every six months or so. At the same time check to make sure all the nuts holding the door together are snug, and generally in good shape. Also look at the track, make sure it's straight, that the rollers in it are properly tracking, and so forth.

CAUTION - Any time you are messing with a garage door, the springs are dangerous! They have a lot of tension in them and can cause serious injury if they get away from you! Be extremely careful to secure them properly before working on them. Coil type springs should have a safety guide cable running down their center - this is a length of cable that is attached to a solid anchor point on each end that limits where the spring can go if it or the lift cable breaks. Torsion type units are especially dangerous, and should not be worked on by anyone that doesn't know exactly what they are doing.

Gooserider

 

[fbelec]

i agree about the springs. if you have the spring above the door don't touch it. if you have one on each side of the door you should have the door open when working on them. some of the old setups don't have a wire run down thru the middle of them. if you don't you should put on in or have someone put one in. the door guys that i run into on jobs say that each spring has so many cycles of open and close. i think 10,000. so if they old and they don't have safety wires thru them you should have it done. i had both of mine let go. they went within 6 months of each other. when it let go i heard it in the house. the dent it left in the wall was good size and missed my window by inches. the other one i put a 10 gauge wire thru it so no problem when that went.

also the door guys i run into say that as long as the track is lined up you should have no problem with the wheels. they have their own grease inside of them and they say that when people put grease on the tracks thinking that they are helping are actually hurting because the grease or lube attracks dirt and will wear out the wheels sooner than if they were left alone. not to say anything about walking by the door and getting grease on your coat and taking that into the nice cloth interior of the car.