Single width metal door, ancient Genie opener. Door goes about halfway down, then up again. Disconnected the door from the chain drive and found that it was imbalanced - the door barely stays open without something propped under it. Could this be one reason the opener's having problems? Too much weight?
Yes. Have the springs adjusted for balance.
I believe mine acted like that when light beam became misaligned from something bumping it.
No light beam on this one. It's that ancient.
I hope it's that easy. Usually, I just LOVE spending more money than I need to, but today, not so much. :-)
Hi, Deal with identified obvious issue first and whatever comes next is next.
A good site I found from a previous poster...
Sounded safety override related. Maybe it stops and reverses if it thinks it hit something.
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in news:%%TPn.37736$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe01.iad:
Spirits and ghosts are going across the path of the garage door. You don't see them, but they set off the door so it won't lower.
. snipped-for-privacy@newsfe01.iad:
If the door stops on the way down, that doesn't make sense if the door is too heavy for the springs. It would make sense if the door was going up, but in the OP words the door was going down and then reversed and went up, so there is no problem with too heavy preventing it from going up. It might be reversing if the door is binding on the way down, but the OP didn't say if he checked for that or not.
If the door stops on the way down, that doesn't make sense if the door is too heavy for the springs. It would make sense if the door was going up, but in the OP words the door was going down and then reversed and went up, so there is no problem with too heavy preventing it from going up. It might be reversing if the door is binding on the way down, but the OP didn't say if he checked for that or not.
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I don't notice anything binding. The door falls very easily. The tracks are clean & well lubricated.
JoeSpareBedroom wrote: ...
Something is, somewhere. Watch how it closes/where it reverses carefully. It's possible the springs aren't evenly tensioned. Also, binding and door action is different when pushed from the location of the actuator rather than pulling from bottom or simply letting fall since the force is applied in different location and direction. Check from that perspective.
Almost certainly it's got a catch-point that is causing the reversal on the force limit switch.
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whens the last time it was lubricated?
You have already received a lot of good advice, but I had a problem with such a door opener that took me years to discover. It too was a Genie chain drive, but WAS balanced at midpoint unlike yours. So this story may not be of much help:
In my case although the door was balanced at midpoint, occasionally I found the door reversing during the close operation. After each failure, I checked for obstructions and never could find one, much less duplicate the reversing problem. It just happened perhaps one time in twenty!!
The solution to the problem was that the rollers that move in the side tracks for the door had some lateral slack. Occasionally this slack allowed the door to move sideways enough to encounter an obstacle (I believe it was the cable attached to the bottom of the door) and that cause the reversing of the door. The problem was it happened so rarely that when troubleshooting the problem it was not apparent. My solution was to place a spacer on one of the roller shafts so that the lateral movement of the door was reduced. This prevented the door from coming close enough to meet the cable and obstruct the free flow of the door.
whens the last time it was lubricated?
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Tracks cleaned & lubricated a month ago. All rollers are tight & straight. (I've seen the opposite, so I know what to look for.) But the door is absolutely out of balance (loose springs).
Adjust the springs. Open and close the door by hand with it disconnected from the drive. But hold it at the center where the drive connects to do this. That's where the drive pushes and pulls so if it is binding you should feel it.
Older opens that did not have the optical obstruction sensors on the floor often had a load sensor in the unit. There may be some adjustors on the unit.
jamesgangnc wrote: ...
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AFAIK still do? At least the one I just installed does; can't imagine would design without it.
Anyway, the intermittent and the mention of the IR sensor reminded me -- had a loose piece of material hanging that occasionally would interrupt the beam once't upon a time--took a while to realize what that problem actually was also because it was intermittent and wouldn't perform on demand, either...
If you read the thread you would know that the op has already stated that his does not have the optical sensors.
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Well, that's the proverbial big if...
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I agree. Every modern one I have seen has both force limit sensors and the optical sensors. I believe both are required. However, given that it reverses on the way down, it may not be the force sensor, because you would think with not enough spring tension it would fail to open instead of close. But I would fix what you know for sure is wrong first. And that is that the door is not properly balanced and the tension needs to be adjusted. It may turn out that something else is wrong, like it binds at some point, etc, but with any door opener, the door needs to be reasonably balanced as a starting point.
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