My garage door keeps 'jamming'. whats wrong?

[urbanG33K]

He guys.

I have a liftmaster 3/4 HP garage door opener. It's lifting a bigger garage door mounted on tracks. The door I believe is 16 x 7. It's an insulated plastic door. It is on tracks and has a large coil spring running the length of the door.

The liftmaster opener appears fairly new as does the tracks, and the actual garage door. I don't believe they are original to the house and recently upgraded before the prior owners sold the house.

Basically I feel this is temperature related or something is out of adjustment. It happens when theres a quick temperature shift in the garage.
Eg: It's -18 Celcius tonight. My garage normally sits around 4 or 5 degrees celcius. When I open my garage door to warm up my car, I let my car run for about 5-10 minutes. The family piles into the car, I back out, click my remote and 1 of 2 things happens....

1) the garage door doesn't budge. The light flashes on the opener signalling obstruction.

or

2) the garage door comes down about 1 panels worth, stops and goes back up, then the light on the opener flashes and signals obstruction.

At this point, I have to get out of the car, pull the manual release and close the door myself. The door doesn't feel jammed as I can release it from the opener, then walk under the door and pull it down with 1 hand.

It never gets jammed openeing, only closing.

I have tried greasing the tracks. I have adjusted downforce to maximum and it still does it.Nothing is in the way of the optical obstruction sensor at floor level on the doors threshold and I have cleaned it.

If the garage is left open for an extended period of time, the problem rights itself.

It happens in hot weather as well. Same symptoms. Open the garage door, in rushes hot humid air, then the opener punts.

Where do I go from here?

 

[gunguy]

Does it happen on sunny days? Sometime direct sunlight on the sensors will cause the door to reverse. Cast a shadow on one or the other sensor then see if the door closes as it should. If it does, try swapping the sensors side for side.

Jim

 

[rburke65]

Not familiar with your opener, but do you have a manual? Are there LED light blinking a fault code? Could be a "down force" adjustment. Good luck.

 

[Jlbc212]

If Gunguy's solution doesn't solve the problem, try this: with the door up and no cars in the garage disconnect the arm between the opener and the door at the opener. Try pushing the door down in the same manner that the opener would. You may need a step-ladder to do this. You only need to push the door far enough so that the bottom section reaches a vertical position. Hopefully, you will be able to see what's causing the problem.

 

[BC1]

My opener does the exact same thing. After much checking and messing with adjustment I have diagnosed it as a piece'o'**** opener. Can't be fixed in my case, on the list to get replaced.

 

[xyster101]

The liftmaster is very fussy with it's sensors. There is a tension roller on the cable going to the torsion spring. Check that to ensure it has proper tension the whole time. Mine did what you are saying and it turned out to be the sensors were not aligned and had a big spider web on them. Read the manual too. There are pressure settings, height settings that you can adjust also.

 

[DekeT]

Realign your sensors.

 

[jeepinerdeep]

The basic liftmaster commercial units have a pushback sensitivity adjustment on the back. Check that if you have one.

 

[Elginz]

Had a very similar problem with my sister-in-law's. It ended up being the sensor controller in the motor. The eyes where working, but the control didn't work all the time, mostly on cold days, and more so as the days got colder. I also lubed the rollers and hinges and all that. I did mess around with the torque settings and all the rest. There was an identical opener right next to it so I could swap parts until I found the problem. Ended up replacing the motor. Nothing else changed, same old eyes, same old rollers and hinges.

 

[joes169]

I wonder if one of the eyes could be fogging over from the condensation of the vehicle exhaust?

Do the eyes have a red & green light on them?

 

[CNGsaves]

Did you bang the neighbor's wife ?? . . .

Pissed husband is standing next to window with extra remote control . . .
. . . . . and hitting button every time you try to lower garage door !!

 

[BigE]

I wonder if one of the eyes could be fogging over from the condensation of the vehicle exhaust?

Do the eyes have a red & green light on them?

The warm moist air inside the sensor box is hitting the cold 'glass' of the sensor and fogging up. Hit it with gradual warmth from a hair dryer and see if it functions.

 

[SchuLace]

I had an issue with my Craftsman(Chamberlain) opener. It would close most of the way and then kick back open. If I held the button on the wall mounted button, it would close fine. There was no rhyme or reason to when it would do it. It didn't matter if it was hot, cold, day night, sunny, gloomy, it would randomly do it. I replaced the sensors and haven't had an issue in the last couple months since I did it. The lights on the eyes were lit up like they should and were lined up but must have been bad internally.

 

[urbanG33K]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Ill be trying some of them out the next time it's doing it and I have time to trouble shoot it - which probably wont be for a couple of days as I'm getting a thorough dose of 'life' right now.

I report back on my progress.




incidently... can sensors be "hotwired" to bypass them for trouble shooting purposes?

 

[41ratrod]

Yes you can put a jumper wire on the controller .

 

[toplessHO]

Yes you can put a jumper wire on the controller .

I would like to know how to trick the sensors
On my Genie Ive never been able to trick the sensor eyes

 

[DenisG]

Usually for a 16' wide door, there are two springs, but in any case, LiftMaster has an article about testing the torsion spring(s) balance forces:
http://liftmaster.custhelp.com/app/...60/~/how-to-test-the-balance-of-a-garage-door

My guess is that you have two torsion springs and one of them is broken.

 

[jgorm]

I would tweak with the pressure sensor adjustments. I had that on my last garage. Don't just max them out because things might break! Ask how I know that

 

[Dcampbell98xj]

The flashing lights usually mean there is a sensor issue. The track may be loose and as the door moves the track wiggles and the sensor eyes get misaligned. Or there could be a short in one of the sensor wires and when the opener starts it jerks causing a short. Either way if the opener is a liftmaster, craftsmen, or chamberlain the flashing lights is a sign of a photo sensor issue.