Question:
What would cause an old electric garage door opener to go about 1/10th the
way up, then stop. There's nothing in the tracks that would stop it from
going up all the way, I know that because if I grab the door and help it up
it will go all the way. Also, there's no problems when closing the door.
Any ideas?
Answer:
The door should be first balanced, then the up force adjusted. This would
put less stress on the garage door opener.
The springs are supposed to cancel the downward pull (gravity) of the door
when the door is about 4 feet off the ground. In other words, if the garage
door is disconnected, you should be able to open the door to 4 feet, let go
and it should stay put.
When my garage door opener stopped opening the door, I looked up and was
horrified to see some of the springs have areas that were overstretched, as
if about to snap. If the previous owner didn't replace them, then the
springs were about 18 years old. I bought replacement springs from home
depot (about $20 each). Make sure you get the correct strength spring. They
are color coded, so you can match the color code of the old springs. Even
better, get the strongest springs possible that allow you to balance the
door. The railings have different mounting holes for the spring for minor
adjustment. By getting the strongest spring possible, you can mount the
spring in the least stretched position and move to a farther mounting hole
when the spring ages. If your spring is too weak, you'd have to use the
farthest mounting hole and when the spring weaken, you'd have to buy new
ones. Since the old spring are not necessarily the optimal spring, you may
have to do some trial-and-error. For that purpose, it's better to get the
springs from Sears, because they are packaged in a way that's easy to
return/exchange. The home depot ones have a shrink wrap on them. I don't
know if they'd let you exchange them after the wrap is gone.
Be very careful when working with these springs. They have more than 100 lbs
of force each when stretched. They made me very nervous (and very cautious).
The new springs being sold now come with a safety cables. The old ones did
not; if they snapped, pieces of spring could fly around in the garage.
This applies to extension springs (they stretch when the door closes). If
yours are torsion springs (wound tighter when the door closes), I have no
idea what to do. I'm not a garage door expert, BTW, so don't believe
everything I say.
