Garage Door Opener Repair
Questions and Answers
Garage Door Opener Repair?
I have a Crawford 1/3 HP garage door opener. Recently, it will only partially open. Sometimes it opens as far as 3 feet off the ground; other times it will open less than a foot off the ground. The chain DOES move, it just stops moving when the door reaches 1-3 feet off the ground. I have to open and close the door manually now. How can I fix this?
Posted by Rick
Admin: The garage door opener does not actually lift the door, it assists the springs in lifting the door. If you have a large spring on the wall above the door, the brackets on either end of the bar that attach to the track sometimes wear out and the bearing binds on the bar causing the motor to stop. You can try the adjustment screws on the opener, but I don’t know why it would all of the sudden get out of adjustment that much. That spring is under high tension and can be dangerous.
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Garage Door Repairs?
My father & I have been working on our double wide garage door. The door & opener is over 10 years old & needs to be replaced but we don’t the money. The door got to the point it wouldn’t even without taking 2 people about 15 minutes to open or close it. We replaced both side rails with brand new ones, both springs have been replaced in the past 2 years, along with the rollers. We straightened & remounted every bracket. Oiled up the rollers, pulleys, etc using the oiling spray designed for garage doors. All of that did fix the problem of it coming off track, and multiple adjustments got it to open without binding up everytime. It still binds occasionally (about 1 out of every 5 times). However the door seems alot heavier one side now than what it did before, and the door still keeps coming down one side faster than the other & vise versa. If we hook it up to the opener to see what it does, it will go up fine but when it comes down, it goes almost all the way down.
Update: It will go down to where it is about 1/2 inch from being all the way down & than automatically goes back up. We have played around with the settings on the opener for sensativity & all hoping to fix the problem, no luck though. It does have equal tension on each side & the pulleys are working fine, as are the rollers. We can’t figure out the problem for the life of us as everything is like it should be. I do know the door was put up pretty crappy & pretty much jerry rigged to work when we moved in & we already had done alot of work to try & fix it. Other than it not coming off track & binding up everytime thats the only thing we’ve accomplished. We can open it manually with 2 people without problem aslong as we open it evenly as it still keeps wanting to come down & go up unevenly, even when operating manually. Any ideas what may be wrong & how to fix it. Keep in mind we don’t have no money to spend on it & CAN NOT CALL A PROFESSIONAL OR GET A WHOLE NEW SET UP(LIKE IT TRULY NEEDS).
Update 2: The springs are equal tension & we have tried the sensitivity & adjustment settings on the opener. The tracks are level. That is the whole problem that we’re running in to is me & my father has brainstormed every day over this & worked on it multiple days, we still can’t even come up with 1 thing that hasn’t already been covered that would cause the problem.
Posted by Marc
Admin:
OK if indeed you have replaced the pulleys and you have equal tension and the same weight springs on both sides then here’s what i would try next, run the door by hand and when it gets to the point where there is resistance or when it starts to go crooked stop it right there and check to see if you can spin the rollers, mainly right at the bottom of the radius where the door comes close to the jamb. You can also take and spray some lube on the jamb where the door rubs. The biggest thing is that you are sure the pulleys and springs are good just cause you lubed them doesn’t mean there OK, there’s a lot of pressure on those pulleys. Good luck.