Liftmaster 3800: Up is down and down is up

[thermarest]

Hello all,

I installed a Liftmaster 3800 this weekend. Upon reaching the adjustment phase, it was immediately clear that something was amiss. Within a couple minutes I had a theory, but I still have no solution and I'm not 100% sure my theory is correct.

The 3800 thinks the door is going up when it is in fact going down, and vise-versa. Here are some examples:

1) In the adjustment step 1, the black button makes the door go down and the purple button makes it go up, opposite to the instructions.

2) While the door is moving upwards in normal operation, if you trip the invisible light beam, the door reverses and starts moving down. This behavior should happen only when the door is initially moving down.

3) While the door is moving down, it is not stopped by tripping the beam. If it is stopped by physical pressure, it stops in place and does not reverse.

My thought is that the drums were installed backwards in 1969 when the house was built and that the cable is coming off the drum on the wrong side. It comes off on the garage side, not the wall side as seen in this photo.

Am I correct here? Is it easy/hard/impossible to re-do the cable on the drums? If the device were so designed, it would be easy to just program it to accommodate the difference, but I do not believe it is.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

View media item 2840

 

[thermarest]

Ok, so I had searched this forum before posting but I guess I didn't look deep enough. I just found a year-old thread where nova65ss says:

"Depending on how close to the ceiling it is you may want to turn it upseide down and mount it to the ceiling rather than the wall then it would program like normal. Basically slide it on the shaft backwards with the front to the wall and the rotate it up toward the ceiling."

I'm pretty sure this would work, but might be a huge PITA. There are only a couple inches between the torsion rod and the ceiling. There was already some of the sheet rock cut away to make room for the drum in the original construction, and I had to make that hole larger to accommodate the top several inches of the 3800.

Open to other ideas before I start taking it all apart again....

 

[nova65ss]

Yep you have drums mounted on the outside so they are opposite of a standard setup. I have never tried it but you may want to program the limits the opposite ofwhat it says and see if that works.

 

[djjsr]

My thought is that the drums were installed backwards in 1969 when the house was built and that the cable is coming off the drum on the wrong side. It comes off on the garage side, not the wall side as seen in this photo.

Am I correct here? Is it easy/hard/impossible to re-do the cable on the drums?

You're right, the cables are wrapping backwards. Easy fix. Get the opener out of the way and take the spring tension off of the cables. Unhook the cables from the drums. Look closely at the drums and you'll see that you probably have to switch them L to R to get the cable to wrap correctly. Then just loosen the set screws, slide them off, slide them back on the correct sides and just hand snug the set screws. Hook the cables in and rotate the drums to get the same amount of tension on both of the cables and tighten the set screws. Put the spring tension back on the drums and recheck for equal tension. Once they both feel the same, adjust the main spring tension adjustment so the door opens easily by hand and hook up the opener.

 

[Photo]

Actually, not that easy of a fix. You'll also have to take the springs off and reverse them as well. If you don't, they will not tension the rod in the right direction and you'll never get your door to open.

Lane

 

[djjsr]

You'll also have to take the springs off and reverse them as well.

Yup, I forgot about that. If they're backwards they definitely need to be flipped. Seems weird that it was assembled bass-ackwards. Maybe the guy lost the instructions and just tried to figure it out. Well, it's worked for a long time!

 

[nova65ss]

It is not backwards that is how it is done when there is not alot of headroom to fit it in there standard. As old as it looks it also appears to be a Crawford door and that is how they designed their stuff back then.

 

[thermarest]

Thanks for those ideas/info. Being a novice, I was thinking perhaps something like just flipping the drum, but I hadn't thought through the whole situation thoroughly. I'm definitely not going to remove the springs as that would open a can of worms for sure.

I'm pretty sure that reversing the unit and mounting it to the ceiling will work and actually won't be as bad as I thought. There is a joist right there (the hole in the sheet rock is flush with the joist on the right side of the photo) that I can screw into. Looks like I didn't have to cut out that ceiling hole nor drill and set the anchor in the cement wall (requiring a separate home depot trip for the masonry bit...oh well!

Too bad Liftmaster doesn't allow for this. It would just be a few lines of code in the firmware. I phoned their technical support and they were no help. Glad I found this forum. I'll report back after trying the fix.

 

[kbs2244]

Have you called Liftmaster?
Thay may have a workaround.

 

[bazzateer]

Have you called Liftmaster?
Thay may have a workaround.

See the post immediately preceding yours, last paragraph!

 

[mrmattsfixitshop]

for reverse wound drums you have to flip the Lm3800 upside down and hang a pulley above it to reverse the direction of the release cable. Liftmaster doesn't make a model for reverse wound drums.

 

[mrmattsfixitshop]

Oh and if you need more head room buy the 480LM kit but it will set you back another 95 bucks or so. I contacted liftmaster and they said it won't work.. but I already spent 300 bucks and wasn't going to take no for an answer.

 

[queenbee]

I've got the same problem, i've got a garage door guy coming to look at mine. This is not an easy problem to fix, i've posted this problem on here and got alot of good advice and unless your willing to undo the springs it's best left to the pros

 

[SgtRauksauff]

I was thinking of putting an LM3800 in my attached garage, and then realized that since the ceiling is so low, and it's got a double-top-track low-clearance setup, my cables are the same way as the original poster's.

I was just planning on mounting it on the ceiling, as that would make rotation the proper direction, provided there's enough room in that tight space. it might end up taking that LM480 extension to make it work right, too. (or some chain and a couple of sprockets, might be able to speed up the opening/closing that way, hehe.)

I know this is a 2-year-old thread, I wonder how the OP fared with his installation. I see he's only made three posts on GJ, for this thread only.

--sarge

 

[STClurker]

the liftmaster is fine, obviously your garage was built upside down

 

[srmofo]

for reverse wound drums you have to flip the Lm3800 upside down and hang a pulley above it to reverse the direction of the release cable. Liftmaster doesn't make a model for reverse wound drums.

Considering its been 2 years Im sure he has this figured out by now

 

[Wastedwagesracing]

Considering its been 2 years Im sure he has this figured out by now

True but for those of us that are considering the 3800. I found the thread informative.

 

[ed08]

13 years later and I now have this exact same problem... Has anyone ran into any issues with running the jackshaft opener "upside down"? That is seeming like the best option to handle this. Otherwise I'm thinking of making a gear setup to reverse the direction of rotation...

 

[ed08]

For anyone else who ends up here, I ended up flipping my unit to face the wall instead of facing out, effectively reversing the rotation. I had enough distance from the wall in my application to make this work and still be able to access controls for setting up the door. A bit goofy looking, but it works!