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I'm having an issue with my Genie Excellerator garage door opener. The garage door will close fine when I have it open, however, when I push the wall button or car unit, the door only opens a couple inches, if I close it and hit open, it opens a little further each time. This never happens when it's time to close the door and the door runs smoothly on the tracks when I put it over to manual.Any suggestions why this is happening when I'm trying to open the unit?
Already Tried: looking in the manual and trying the troubleshooting issue, which was playing with the "open force" knob but I'm not really sure what that does or where it's supposed to be at
Hi, Welcome to JustAnswer.com, I am glad you are here! My name is Eric & I will endeavor to answer your question.
The likely reason your door is stopping is because it is sensing monor resistance. This is a built-in safety feature. If it senses resistance before it reaches it's upward or downward limit settings, it will either reverses itself or stop.
Often as a garage door ages, its moving parts don't slip and slide as freely as they did when the unit was new. The manufacturers had foresight enough to understand this and built in a way for the homeowner to make an adjustment and compensate for this added resistance.
Up on the motor are 2 dials that are force adjustments. These are user accessible. They could however, be under the plastic light shield which you might have to remove in order to gain access to them. Sometimes these are just a shaft about 1/4"in diameter sticking out of the back with a slot for a screwdriver and sometimes you have to insert a small screwdriver into a hole. There should be some type of directional indicator telling you which is more and which is less and which is up and which is down.
These are upward and downward force adjustments. Increasing the downward force slightly will tell the system to push through a greater resistance before it reverses itself or stops. Increasing the up force adjustment will do the same thing only in the up direction.
Try increasing the upward force just a little. If that does not solve the problem, try increasing it some more.
This should solve your problem.
I tried that force setting before, it definitely makes the door open a little more - the org. setting caused the door to open 6" but if I get the force all the way up it opens 3ft. If I push the button to close the door, but hit it again very quickly it opens another foot or two and I can I keep doing this until it opens. The door closes fine everytime. Any other possibilities?
Hi,
When the door is disengaged from the trolly and opened manually, will it stay in any position/location you try to leave it. ie: 1/2 open, 3/4 open or 1/3 open without falling closed? If not, the springs are not adjusted properly. That is one possibility.
If the door is indeed properly balanced... Please open up the motor case and tell me if you see any signs of white or black plastic shavings in the bottom. If so, operate the motor while observing what s going on inside of the housing and tell me if it looks like there are any gears slipping.
If not, there are perhaps other things to check however, I will need the exact model number of your opener in order to proceed.
The door does not stay in any position, I know the springs are in need of replacement but I'm trying to hold off on that because we just bought this house and money's flying out the door. The door opener seemed to be on a treaded rod that controls the opening and closing so why would the springs come into play here?
A day or two after we moved in (4 months ago) one of the wheels that the cable runs through above the door snapped off and I had to have a guy come out and fix it. he mentioned the springs at that time but he was throwing out some big numbers. Anyway around replacing springs are this point?
Contrary to popular belief, a garage door opener is only engineered to move a door that is properly balanced, not to actually lift the weight of the door.
If the springs are no longer doing their job, the door is probably too heavy for the opener to lift door any longer. Perhaps If your opener is a 1/2 HP opener , you might be able to install a new 3/4 HP opener? This may just handle the door and cost less than new springs. Replacement of the opener is also a job you can probably do yourself whereby the replacement of the springs need to be handled by a professional.
I guess I've reached the point I might as well replace the springs. Could you please give me a good idea on what I should expect to pay having someone come out to do it?
Do you have torsion springs or extension springs?
ext.
You should always replace both springs. I have found that the prices to do this range greatly between different companies so get several estimates. Don't try this yourself. The price for this job done by a pro including materials should run between $165 and $250 for Extension Springs and between about $225 and $325 for torsion springs.
Experience: I've been been doing things for my clients that others have said cant be done for over a 1/4 Century
thanks for your time and help. Just to be clear, to have a set of new springs installed (parts & labor) I'm looking at $165 to 250 - correct?
Yes, that should be about right on average. Unless you live some place such as LA, NYC, Chicago or other such larger (translate "a more expensive city"). That should be about right.