garage remote

Jan 05, 2008 5 Replies

My remote garage door opener has become flakey. It will work, but I have to punch in the code very slowly and sometimes two or more times. The remotes in the car work OK.



It's one that I got at HD.



I replaced battery.



Is this fixable, or should I just replace it?



Thanks


The opener mechanism is a Stanley, installed in 1992. It seems to work fine.


Hi, If you know what you are doing. Remote frequency may have strayed off a bit with weather change.

check the obvious. Did you check the battery on a tester before you put the new one on?There should be a foot or so of receiver wire coming out of your opener, and maybe that fell off. Look for a round hole in your opener. Take the top off. You may see a threaded device there where you can put a rod or a small screwdriver in the access hole and slide the tuning thingus. Go to the distance you want the operator to work from, hold the button down, and adjust the thingus in and out. Keep track of your starting point th counting the turns. If that don't work, I don't know what else to try. Just do what I do. I honk, and the wife comes out and lifts the garage door. ;-)

Steve

Don't know where you are, but I've had similar problems here in MN in the depths of winter. Once it gets below zero both the outdoor keypad and the remote in the car (if left overnight in a cold garage) lose a lot of their oomph and fail to transmit beyond a few feet (this was an infuriating one to figure out....the remote would open the door when I was in the garage close to the unit, but would not close when on the drive 20 feet away!). To prove the point, try swapping out or room temperature battery when it is misbehaving. If that is the issue, then it's likely that a replacement will suffer the same issue (unless hard wired).

Sure sounds like dirty keypad contacts to me.

Try taking it apart. If you are lucky you'll be able to separate the rubber key "contact" sheet from the printed circuit board it's next to.

If you can, wipe off the rubber contacts and the PC board with denatured alcohol and reassemble it.

If you can't easily accomplish that, then just buy a new remote.

I've "revived" many a TV remote that way. I've been told that over time skin oils can work their way right through those rubber buttons and crud up the contact areas.

HTH,

Jeff

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