My garage doors has been operating marginally for quite a while. I’d mess with the settings, watch YouTube videos and basically tinker around with the adjustments trying to get it working right. I’ve resorted to manually opening and closing them because the motors sometimes are not able to do so.
Today, I’m tackling this beast or, dying trying.
Background:
My garage doors are wooden, old and have some goofy situations. I’m not sure if it is normal, but the installer seems to have ran the tracks into the poured cement on the garage floor. This make moving the rails basically impossible… yea I can cut them at the floor but don;t have enough ecperience to be sure that won’t cause a secondary problem.
I’m currently doing a deep education, but I find the info that you really need is hard to find. There’s lots of YouTube videos of varying quality but nobody explains the principles that one should seek. This happens a lot as it takes a higher level understanding to communicate at the level. Lots of people know what to do but can’t explain it in a more general sense so you can morph the understanding into your particulars (something I try to do in all of my teachings).
Anyway, so here I am.
What I have grasped with a mild confidence is that it’s about balancing forces. Like an elevator, the springs provide a balancing force against the door so that the motor in the opener can do less work to open and close the garage door.
You want the door to move smoothly and with minimal effort without the opener before adding in the opener.
The door will naturally fall so the springs are there to pull back on the tension.
I believe the first thing to do is to work on the spring tension and keep adjusting it so that the door is easy to open and close and is not prone to either go up or down when left alone
One safety warning is that you need to add protection to stopping the door from running away free and slamming to the floor. If part of your body happens to be under a heavy, run away door, you could get hurt. The standard trick is to use a vide grip plyers and clamp it to the rail so that the door will be stopped by it, and only slowly remove if. I would suggest a backup safety the first time you remove it in case something is wrong… A problem avoided is a problem solved !
I’ll be posting more about this process but it is happening or I fail after a hard try TODAY.
