Okay, so a few weekends ago, I help my brother-in-law diagnose and fix his sprinkler system problem in 20 minutes instead of the two hours I was expecting it would take to find, dig up, and fix the wiring problem.
As I was walking out of his garage to put my tools away and leave, my brother-in-law asks me, “Do you know anything about garage door openers?” Well, since I’ve put in a couple in my houses in the past and diagnosed and fixed them – and since I’ve always been rather curious about his “iDrive” openers, never having seen one anywhere before, I told him, “I’ll take a look.”
Big mistake #1.
My brother-in-law has two single bay garage doors with two separate iDrive Torquemaster openers (a “north” bay and a “south” bay). The “problem” he was having was that the north opener’s motor was not dropping down into the vertical lock position after the door was closed. Other than that, it opened and closed the door just fine. The south opener worked perfectly – the motor pivoted up and down as designed.
Well, I thought I would be able to figure out the problem by just running the perfectly-working south opener through a few cycles to see how its operation differed from the north one and then be able to easily fix it. Well, nothing was immediately obvious. My brother-in-law had apparently been trying to diagnose it himself sometime earlier because he had already taken off all of the openers’ covers before I showed up.
With the covers off, I watched the potentiometer screw and sliding switch and thought maybe it was binding somewhere so I gave it a little shot of WD-40. No change.
After other unsuccessful efforts to find anything visually operationally different between the two openers, I thought I’d try to see if the south (perfectly-working) opener could automatically reset itself if the opener had been disengaged using the emergency release cable and the door had been moved before being re-engaged. I did this because my brother-in-law mentioned that he had pulled the emergency release handle on the north opener a couple of times when trying to fix the opener himself, and I thought maybe he had re-engaged the door in the “wrong position.” I was trying to replicate this on the south opener to see how the opener might “reset” itself.
Big mistake #2.
Here’s what I did (but shouldn't have done):
With the door in the normal closed position, I pulled the emergency release on the south opener. I then easily manually raised the garage door all the way up into the full open position, and then re-engaged the door to the opener by releasing the emergency release handle.
I then pushed the button on the remote wall switch and got – nothing. I had expected the opener motor to cycle through, re-engage the torquemaster bar, and then close the open garage door. But it just sat there and did nothing. I don’t recall if I actually heard the motor try to operate at all or not.
Hmm, so thinking it was just a temporary glitch, I pulled the emergency release handle, pulled the door down manually into the closed position, and then re-engaged the door. I pushed the button on the wall switch again and got – nothing. Now, I was getting worried – what had moments before been a perfectly operating door now didn’t operate in either the up or down direction. (I had also tried adjusting the starting position of the potentiometer screw switch but that didn’t help.)
It was at this point my brother-in-law comes out of the house with the original paper iDrive installation and operation manual! Yeah, I know – RTFM first. I should have asked him for the manual at the very beginning but I thought he had lost it because he didn’t bring it out when we first started to work on the openers.
Anyway, I checked the Troubleshooting guide in the manual and right away spotted the cause and solution for the north opener motor not dropping down into the “lock” position – I just needed to back out the detent screw a bit. I did that and presto – problem fixed!
However, the original perfectly-working south opener was now the problem.
I read in the manual about the “Install” and “Profile” setting routines needing to be run and so I tried both of them with the south opener. I’m sure the opener is communicating with the remote wall switch because when I press the red reset button on the opener and then press the button on the wall switch, I hear the confirmation beep from the opener.
Yet every time we try to activate the south opener from the wall switch, we hear two beeps and one buzz coming from the opener, and no motor sound at all. The motor is completely quiet – it’s not like its gear is jammed or anything.
And yes, the wall outlet the opener is plugged into is live, and as a second test we’ve even run an extension cord from another known good outlet in the garage and plugged the opener into that and still no motor operation noise. All we get when we press the wall switch button are two beeps and a short buzz (a “buzz” and not a “chirp” like I’ve read elsewhere on the internet).
I know the motor in the south opener is not burned out because I’ve swapped it out with the motor from the north opener and both motors work when they are installed in the north opener, but neither motor works in the south opener so it’s not the motor itself.
I’ve tried to test the voltage readings at the circuit board outlet that the motor plug plugs into on the south opener, and when the wall switch is pressed I get varying readings from 8-24 volts on the north opener plug and about zero on the south opener plug. That tells me that it looks like no power is getting to the motor when mounted in the south opener. (I am still curious why the readings are not consistent in the first place, but at least the motor does work in that opener.)
I pulled the circuit board and tested the two soldered-in fuses (a small “resistor”-looking one and a tall thin “canister”-looking one) - both show continuity. I also visually inspected the boards for any obvious damage - no damage seen. The main board and the little soldered-on remote control receiver daughter board both have “2001” dates. The “Door Operator Model” is 3661-372; these openers were installed when my brother-in-law’s house was built around 2001 or 2002.
Since there apparently is no power at the motor plug on the circuit board, I was looking for possible circuit component issues. I noticed two identical twin relays on the board and searched out their specs online. I learned that twin SPDT relays are used to be able to power and reverse spin direction on motors so I’m thinking they may be the culprits.
I found a circuit diagram for these two specific relays posted online by the manufacturer and tested for continuity. There is continuity in the resting state of the relays, but I show no continuity across what I think are either relay’s coil contacts. I try powering each relay’s coil temporarily with a 9V battery but get no clicks and no change in the circuit that should be switched when the coils are powered. In summary, it seems like both relays may have burnt out the coils.
That’s still a little puzzling because even if both relay coils are burnt out, I would think the motor circuit in the resting state configuration would still work in one direction.
I was sort of hoping I could definitively pin the problem on the two relays because those parts are pretty cheap - $1.35/each + shipping (it costs more to ship them than to buy them). However, even with new relays, it might be an impossible fix because the remote control receiver daughter board is soldered into place less than ¼” above some of the relays’ contacts – I know my standard size soldering iron tip can’t get into that small of a clearance.
So, I’m hoping some of the Wayne Dalton iDrive “experts” on the Garage Journal – guys like NUNNSGT, ovilla, and AlanL who have commented on other posts – might be able to suggest some possible solutions to the situation I have described.
My brother-in-law and sister-in-law like these iDrive openers – they’ve had them in their house since it was built about 14 years ago and have not had any major operational issues until now. Since I apparently did something to cause the south opener to no longer work when it was working perfectly before, I feel obligated to fix it. I’d like to understand the real problem before ending up having to resort to buy an old system off of eBay since no one really services these things anymore. I’d hate to buy an entire replacement opener if it really was a “simple” problem and fix and I just didn’t know what to look for.
Thanks.
(BTW, I see many of the openers being sold on eBay are the later "3663-372" model with the more vertically-oriented 2-button wall switch instead of the wider, 5-button "horizontal" wall switch like my brother-in-law has. Anybody know if the older 2001 era remotes like my brother-in-law has will communicate without a problem with these newer openers? )
As I was walking out of his garage to put my tools away and leave, my brother-in-law asks me, “Do you know anything about garage door openers?” Well, since I’ve put in a couple in my houses in the past and diagnosed and fixed them – and since I’ve always been rather curious about his “iDrive” openers, never having seen one anywhere before, I told him, “I’ll take a look.”
Big mistake #1.
My brother-in-law has two single bay garage doors with two separate iDrive Torquemaster openers (a “north” bay and a “south” bay). The “problem” he was having was that the north opener’s motor was not dropping down into the vertical lock position after the door was closed. Other than that, it opened and closed the door just fine. The south opener worked perfectly – the motor pivoted up and down as designed.
Well, I thought I would be able to figure out the problem by just running the perfectly-working south opener through a few cycles to see how its operation differed from the north one and then be able to easily fix it. Well, nothing was immediately obvious. My brother-in-law had apparently been trying to diagnose it himself sometime earlier because he had already taken off all of the openers’ covers before I showed up.
With the covers off, I watched the potentiometer screw and sliding switch and thought maybe it was binding somewhere so I gave it a little shot of WD-40. No change.
After other unsuccessful efforts to find anything visually operationally different between the two openers, I thought I’d try to see if the south (perfectly-working) opener could automatically reset itself if the opener had been disengaged using the emergency release cable and the door had been moved before being re-engaged. I did this because my brother-in-law mentioned that he had pulled the emergency release handle on the north opener a couple of times when trying to fix the opener himself, and I thought maybe he had re-engaged the door in the “wrong position.” I was trying to replicate this on the south opener to see how the opener might “reset” itself.
Big mistake #2.
Here’s what I did (but shouldn't have done):
With the door in the normal closed position, I pulled the emergency release on the south opener. I then easily manually raised the garage door all the way up into the full open position, and then re-engaged the door to the opener by releasing the emergency release handle.
I then pushed the button on the remote wall switch and got – nothing. I had expected the opener motor to cycle through, re-engage the torquemaster bar, and then close the open garage door. But it just sat there and did nothing. I don’t recall if I actually heard the motor try to operate at all or not.
Hmm, so thinking it was just a temporary glitch, I pulled the emergency release handle, pulled the door down manually into the closed position, and then re-engaged the door. I pushed the button on the wall switch again and got – nothing. Now, I was getting worried – what had moments before been a perfectly operating door now didn’t operate in either the up or down direction. (I had also tried adjusting the starting position of the potentiometer screw switch but that didn’t help.)
It was at this point my brother-in-law comes out of the house with the original paper iDrive installation and operation manual! Yeah, I know – RTFM first. I should have asked him for the manual at the very beginning but I thought he had lost it because he didn’t bring it out when we first started to work on the openers.
Anyway, I checked the Troubleshooting guide in the manual and right away spotted the cause and solution for the north opener motor not dropping down into the “lock” position – I just needed to back out the detent screw a bit. I did that and presto – problem fixed!
However, the original perfectly-working south opener was now the problem.
I read in the manual about the “Install” and “Profile” setting routines needing to be run and so I tried both of them with the south opener. I’m sure the opener is communicating with the remote wall switch because when I press the red reset button on the opener and then press the button on the wall switch, I hear the confirmation beep from the opener.
Yet every time we try to activate the south opener from the wall switch, we hear two beeps and one buzz coming from the opener, and no motor sound at all. The motor is completely quiet – it’s not like its gear is jammed or anything.
And yes, the wall outlet the opener is plugged into is live, and as a second test we’ve even run an extension cord from another known good outlet in the garage and plugged the opener into that and still no motor operation noise. All we get when we press the wall switch button are two beeps and a short buzz (a “buzz” and not a “chirp” like I’ve read elsewhere on the internet).
I know the motor in the south opener is not burned out because I’ve swapped it out with the motor from the north opener and both motors work when they are installed in the north opener, but neither motor works in the south opener so it’s not the motor itself.
I’ve tried to test the voltage readings at the circuit board outlet that the motor plug plugs into on the south opener, and when the wall switch is pressed I get varying readings from 8-24 volts on the north opener plug and about zero on the south opener plug. That tells me that it looks like no power is getting to the motor when mounted in the south opener. (I am still curious why the readings are not consistent in the first place, but at least the motor does work in that opener.)
I pulled the circuit board and tested the two soldered-in fuses (a small “resistor”-looking one and a tall thin “canister”-looking one) - both show continuity. I also visually inspected the boards for any obvious damage - no damage seen. The main board and the little soldered-on remote control receiver daughter board both have “2001” dates. The “Door Operator Model” is 3661-372; these openers were installed when my brother-in-law’s house was built around 2001 or 2002.
Since there apparently is no power at the motor plug on the circuit board, I was looking for possible circuit component issues. I noticed two identical twin relays on the board and searched out their specs online. I learned that twin SPDT relays are used to be able to power and reverse spin direction on motors so I’m thinking they may be the culprits.
I found a circuit diagram for these two specific relays posted online by the manufacturer and tested for continuity. There is continuity in the resting state of the relays, but I show no continuity across what I think are either relay’s coil contacts. I try powering each relay’s coil temporarily with a 9V battery but get no clicks and no change in the circuit that should be switched when the coils are powered. In summary, it seems like both relays may have burnt out the coils.
That’s still a little puzzling because even if both relay coils are burnt out, I would think the motor circuit in the resting state configuration would still work in one direction.
I was sort of hoping I could definitively pin the problem on the two relays because those parts are pretty cheap - $1.35/each + shipping (it costs more to ship them than to buy them). However, even with new relays, it might be an impossible fix because the remote control receiver daughter board is soldered into place less than ¼” above some of the relays’ contacts – I know my standard size soldering iron tip can’t get into that small of a clearance.
So, I’m hoping some of the Wayne Dalton iDrive “experts” on the Garage Journal – guys like NUNNSGT, ovilla, and AlanL who have commented on other posts – might be able to suggest some possible solutions to the situation I have described.
My brother-in-law and sister-in-law like these iDrive openers – they’ve had them in their house since it was built about 14 years ago and have not had any major operational issues until now. Since I apparently did something to cause the south opener to no longer work when it was working perfectly before, I feel obligated to fix it. I’d like to understand the real problem before ending up having to resort to buy an old system off of eBay since no one really services these things anymore. I’d hate to buy an entire replacement opener if it really was a “simple” problem and fix and I just didn’t know what to look for.
Thanks.
(BTW, I see many of the openers being sold on eBay are the later "3663-372" model with the more vertically-oriented 2-button wall switch instead of the wider, 5-button "horizontal" wall switch like my brother-in-law has. Anybody know if the older 2001 era remotes like my brother-in-law has will communicate without a problem with these newer openers? )
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