Garage Door Adjusting

[AaronM]

I have been having issues with my garage door & opener. As my garage door nears the down position, it puts a tremendous amount of force on the rail that the opener rides on, bending it down. What adjustments do I need to make to correct this? I have tried toying around with the disconnect arm bolt positions, but I can't seem to get it correct.

Any ideas?

Aaron

[reddog]

Disconnect the opener drive and push the door down manually with the part that slides on the rail. See if you can diagnose where its binding up at and adjust from there.

When you have that kind of trouble, you need to move the door with the arm, rather than just simply pulling the door up and down. It may work fine if you pull it up and down manually, but operate differently when moved by the arm.

[Wanderer]

Some bend is normal in the closed position so don't worry about that unless you know it's excessive. Is anything binding before it's completely closed?

Otherwise there should be some limit switch adjustments in the body of the opener. Not knowing what type you have I can't tell you where on yours but they're on the back of mine. You may have to remove the light lens to see them or a small cover panel.

The adjustments found there are for fine tuning. Changing the bolt location on the disconnect arm is too much and meant for installation only.

Do you happen to still have the owner/installation manual? It should explain how to make the adjustments in detail. You can usually find what you need with a quick web search if you type in your make/model/serial number.

[delcecchi]

Sounds to me like something wrong with the springs that counterbalance the weight of the door. Maybe one is broken, which means the opener has to deal with the weight of the door. That would be the first thing I would check.

[walleyeseeker]

I've had this problem with doors in the past. What I found was the track was to close to the wall. Loosen the side brackets and move the track away from the wall at the top. Check that both sides are the same distance away. A quarter of an inch can make a huge difference.

[AaronM]

Thanks for the help. I did as reddog suggested - there were not any apparent binding issues. I went back to the up and down adjustment, and they ended up being able to solve my problem. My down adjustment took about 20 turns to correct. Up to this point, I had been doing the recommended half turns - wasn't even close.

Thank you!

[BartmanMN]

Dang, you must have had some serious downward force on that thing. Luckily it didn't break anything.