I discovered that my garage door was iced shut when I tried using my Genie “POWERLIFT 900” Model 2562 screw drive door opener. I assumed the awful sound I heard was that of the screw drive devouring the threads on the carriage that runs the door up and down.
But from looking at it closer it seems like the threads on the carriage may still be intact. I see no obvious physical damage at all. What may have happened is that the carriage may have “jumped” its threads from its normal position on the drive screw. With the carriage improperly located on the drive screw, the opener doesn’t know if the door is open, closed or somewhere in between. It is acting as if it it thinks the carriage is in the fully open position when the carriage is really fully closed.
Before anybody says it, I know that there’s an emergency release lever on the shuttle, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the carriage that the shuttle engages with. The appears to be no way to disengage the carriage from the screw without complete disassembly. The shuttle does disengage from the carriage as it is supposed to.
The up/down limits seem to be software controlled rather than by hard switches or mechanical means. I’m guessing the opener’s brain counts the revolutions of the screw to keep track of the door’s position. If that is the case, I’m hoping I can adjust the up/down limits back to where they should be. I have so far resisting trying this because I don’t want to make a bad situation worse.
I’ve been all over the owner’s manual, found out the hard way that manufacturer support is nearly nonexistent and looked a bunch of You Tube videos with no joy.
So do I go ahead and start tweaking the up/down limits and see what happens? It would seem that manufacturers would anticipate this failure mode and provide an easy work-around. Am I missing a real easy solution?
Not a factual answer, but you may want to consider just having a guy come out to look at and pricing a new one. What I found when mine went out (not a screw type) was that these things are not made for repair. It may be cheaper to just replace instead of bandageing up and old model.
One of the Genie 900 vids I just saw shows the screw has a joint in the center (for shipment & assembly). When the door is down, maybe this is the weakest point and it snapped?
Otherwise, there are a bunch about limits but they aren’t mechanical.
Do use your emergency release, then bring the door back down and relock the release and try again. There are also some star or worm gears in the box which tend to wear, so you might have someone replace those. Absolutely don’t mess with any hardware attached to your door, this is one of the things you should pay for.
I can open and close the door manually because I used the emergency release to uncouple the screw driven carriage from the shuttle attached to the door. The door goes up and down freely. The carriage is stuck at the door end of the rail. When I activate the opener with the door uncoupled, the door obviously stays still but the carriage moves. It moves about 1 foot toward the door, hits the end of the rail, can’t go any further and stops. The screw continues to turn, grinding loudly against the thread in the carriage for maybe 5 seconds. At that point the opener decides the door isn’t going anywhere and reverses. It travels back to about 1 foot from the door which is where it started. So the carriage moves but only about 1 foot. It will not travel to the other end of the screw (toward the motor head) where it should be if the door were attached and open.
I’m not sure if I’m adequately explaining what’s going on.
I installed the door and opener about two years ago. I am quite aware of the dangers involved. I’m just lazy and hoping for an easy fix that doesn’t involve taking the thing completely apart. But if it has to come apart, then it will.
In case anybody is keeping score, I fixed it. All I had to do was reset the up/down limits. I got lucky this time.
Two years ago when my garage door froze, the opener tore the door apart whilst simultaneously shredding its own internals. Both were beyond repair so I ended up with a project that would have been better done on a warm June day rather than during a February cold snap. I wasn’t looking forward to having to do that again.
When weather conditions favor icing, I will lightly kick the bottom of the garage door to check to see if it’s frozen before using the opener. Obviously I’ve forgotten to do that twice in as many years.
I suppose I could try spraying some silicone lube on the door’s bottom gasket. Maybe that could help it not to freeze to the concrete floor.