Garage Door Opener Requires Excessive Force To Reverse



Question:
My wife noticed that our garage door takes a lot of force to reverse, so I went out to adjust it. I backed off the adjustment (quite a bit) until the door would sometimes reverse while closing, then turned it up a tiny bit at a time until the door would close every time. When I tried to get the door to reverse, it still took way more force than I'd consider safe. So I think I have a problem with the door or the opener. The opener is an old chain-driven Sears Craftsman unit that probably came with the house (we bought the house last year, it was built in 1988). I know not to mess with the torsion spring in the door, so I was going to first call somebody out to make sure it's adjusted properly, and that I don't have any mechanical problems with the door itself. Anyone want to speculate on the cause of my problems with the door? I had planned on replacing the garage door opener with a quieter screw-drive within the next year.

Answer:
First guess drive gear in opener has worn out! But...... Disengaged your opener so that the door is no longer tracked (you know pull that rope thing, emergency release). Does your door lift up and down freely? (note your door may be much heavier than your think, but you should be able to tell that tensioner is helping you, this is hard for me to explain.) Your tension may need to be adjusted and the rollers oiled. Fix this first then if you still have problems check out the opener. Last winter, an older neighbor had a similar problem. His system reached a point where it would no longer lift the door open, but would close it. He opened it by hand, and used the closer to shut it. I removed the box like panel that surrounds the opener unit (unplug first), to access the inside and found that the main drive gear was shredded to pieces, looked like a mouse chewed it up and spit it out. The gear was white plastic/nylon not metal. And I believe this was a Craftsman unit also. He called a few parts places and could get a gear in 5-7 days, but instead went and bought a new opener (since his laborer was working for free). The new one was the same brand! The new box was missing a section of the rail/track bar. He called the store back they said NP, we will pull one from another box. By then I noticed I only had to change out the box and not the bar system, since he got the same basic model and the old bar system was in good shape. Actually the old bar was better, it was a one piece, not like the new one (4 or 5, 3 foot sections you bolt together with brackets).





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