Anyone know about garage door openers?

rattlecanpaint

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 18, 2005
Location
Winston Salem
My neighbor has a genie excelerator garage door opener that opens and closes once and then it will only go up to about the height of the little eyes for the anti trap and it shuts off. If you hold the button down it opens till you let off the button. If it sits for a while (like a day) it will work again (once) or if you cut power to it it will work once. When it opens the first time it goes relatively slow and the second time when it quits it seem so move really fast. She's had it about a year and hasn't even put her car in the garage 'cause she's afraid she won't be able to get back out. My guees is the opener itself is faulty, but know very little about them. Anyone have any ideas?
 
Check and make sure the little eyes havn't been bumped and are still pointing at eachother. My parents garage door wouldn't open all the way unless you held the button down. Once we got those pointed at each other again it worked just like it should.
 
I've got the same openers. If the eyes aren't seeing each other, the door will go all the way up and the light will blink.

When you first put power to it, it does go very slowly until it re-learns where full up and full down are.

I've never experienced what you're describing.. sorry.
 
sounds like the opener is bad. Try checking on the chain when the door is down, there should be 2 little clips on it, I think they should be red(mine are). These trigger a gizmo in the unit when to stop the door on open or close. Make sure they are adjusted right.

Does the door not have the manual lever on it? Just release it from the chain and have a manual door until she can replace the unit.
 
I believe (if hers is the same as mine) they are screw drive.
IIRC, there are potentiometers on the back side of the opener that control how far it opens total.. might wanna look at those.
 
The eyes are deff. pointing at each other. The red one blinks when you break the beam like it should. When ther's nothing in the way, it is on solid. Rich, are the potentiometers under the light housing? Oh and it is a screw drive. Very quiet too I might add. (When it runs).
 
I went and checked the manual..

There's both limit switches, and adjustments inside the light housing.

the 2 limit switches should be one near the wall, and one closer to the motor housing.. they are just little magnetic field dealies.

I bet if you were to adjust the "up force" (or "open force") pot, it would do more.

Basically.. manually open the door until it's fully open, set the magnetic limit switch. (Sounds like it is set though)

then starting at full counter clockwise, turning clockwise, adjust that pot until the door goes fully up. do the same thing for the other one for down force. You want the minimum force that it takes to fully open & close the door.

HTH
 
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