garage door jumping?

yet another question (sorry!). this house has a large attached garage with a 10 foot wide, 7.5 foot high sectional insulated Garaga door installed in

2000. Metal tracking, and wearing metal rollers.

Recently had a nice Craftsman 1/2 horse operator professionally installed. at the time (last fall) he told me the door was perfectly balanced and aligned, and could not get any better (thats a good thing).

I've noticed now in the cold spell we've had the door has "bound up" a few times and caused the operator to reverse. since the real cold has gone and we're in the -15c stuff, the door seems to open smoothly, but closing from full-open it sometimes "hops" and "surges" down.

what causes this and whats the fix? the only thing I should really replace are the rollers, and will upgrade to ball bearing, rubber edged rollers in the spring. also, is an operator isolator kit worth the money? since its attached, the operator radiates some noise to the rooms above...

thks for the advice. b

Reply to
Hamilton Audio
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Reply to
Anthony Diodati

Disconnect the opener from the door. How does it work now? Are the spring(s) still on one piece? There are lots of possible problems. You need to do a little detective work to find them, that starts by disconnecting the drive.

Without the drive the door should move smoothly up and down without needing a lot of assistance either way and should stay in both the up and down positions without help.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

Disconnect the opener and see how it works. If it is heavy or rough, call a pro. Garage doors are very dangerous to work on if you don't know what you are doing. You won't believe how heavy they are if you do something wrong and they come crashing down.

Watch out for the crooks with the large Yellow Pages ads that have a low come on price and then tell you you need $600 of repairs. In my area, Wayne Dalton repairs any brand doors for a reasonable price and sells top of the line doors if you want to replace it. If they are on your area, consider calling them for a repair.

Reply to
Arthur Begun

Sounds like the opener is installed too high above the door. When the door is fully opened the operator rail should be within 2" of the top of the door. When the opener is installed to high the opener carriage will actually try to overtake the door and will cause the door to "hop & surge" instead of forcing the door to close smoothly. If this is the problem & if the opener is left that way eventually it will buckle the heck out of the top section & maybe the whole door.

Doordoc

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Reply to
Doordoc

It's not the opener, it is the door stationary pulleys. But wait.. it gets better. surging means their still in phase, when thy get out of phase and the "camming" gets worse it can shake things to pieces. just vise the door open, release cable and replace pulleys. The acid test is to spray wd40 in the center of pulley and see if it goes away - this will also buy you time. Frank

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Reply to
frank roarty

Could also be caused by improper header mount above door. I always lagbolt 2x4 so the wallboard doesn't crush and allow push pull motion(creep)- your statement about door sometimes reversing makes me wonder if the installation hasn't crept since initial set up. As far as isolation kits - they aren't much good -Ive done as well with hose gaskets betwee unit and verticals. also thin cardboard between case and housing on either side of vert mounts does wonders to stop amplification. I'm sorry you already invested. I've recently installed some lift - master 2280's with something new called MVIS motor vibration isolation

- they also are belt drive. If the doors were not moving I would have sworn they were broke. This was on a double garage with 80 inch vertical drops! I really don't want to install anything else anymore but they are kind of pricey and I apparently just missed the promo.

Reply to
frank roarty

I played with it some more today to verify. on upward movement the door is perfectly smooth all the way up. from the fully up position and it being still, lowering the door is just about perfectly smooth too, with a little bit of "bump" on startup. when it surges is when I stop it halfway, and then power it up or down again...the first part of the movement is jerky. releasing the operator, I can operate the door quite smoothly up and down, and it will hold itself in position at most heights.

I'm attributing the mid-drop reversing to substantially cold weather we had. Only happened 2 or 3 times total... NOTHING behaves quite right in the brutal cold snap we had...easy -40c for weeks. sometimes into -50c with the wind! I was warned by the installer NOT to monkey with the downforce in the cold....I wasn't sure what he meant, but now I am...apparently this is common in this area? brutal cold causes things to shrink and shift, causing things to not be quite in alignment.

the door tech is a seasoned professional and very good at what he does. he confirmed in the fall that the door could not be more balanced or smooth and I should be happy...guess I'm just over reacting to something I've had no experience with....

b

Reply to
Hamilton Audio

It would help a ton if you replaced the cheap rollers you got with your door with the quality rollers you can buy even on ebay. These have the white plastic rollers and they reduce friction and noise by

50 percent.
Reply to
mikey55

actually, I've already ordered them! :) They are full ball bearing, nylon edged rollers. Got em for roughly $3.50 each cdn, which I didn't think was too bad....

in the spring I'll have them changed....the bottom one is impossible to get out without unlooping the cable, which is something I'm not familiar with.

Reply to
Hamilton Audio

I had the same problem once and It turned out to be a broken hinge.

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