Author Topic: Repaired my garage door opener by myself  (Read 2036 times)

MoneyCat

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Repaired my garage door opener by myself
« on: June 27, 2016, 10:51:22 AM »
When we bought our house three years ago, it came with an ancient garage door opener which must have been made back in the mid-late 90s. We never bothered replacing it because it worked just fine. Well, a couple months ago, it broke completely and we just manually lifted and lowered the garage door rather than replace it to save money.

Lately, I've been on a kick of learning to repair stuff (starting with a nine year old iPod classic), so I decided today to try tackling this garage door opener. It was so old that I had trouble finding manuals online and there weren't any websites with repair instructions, but lo and behold, there was a tutorial on YouTube. Once again, repairing a device myself was really easy once I knew what I was doing.

Our society teaches us that we need to pay "experts" to fix stuff for us, but, honestly, there is so much you can do yourself. If you are on this forum, then you are an intelligent person. With very few exceptions, you are completely capable of repairing stuff yourself. You will save a lot of money and learn new skills and that's a very good thing.


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HPstache

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Re: Repaired my garage door opener by myself
« Reply #1 on: June 27, 2016, 11:39:58 AM »
What was wrong with it... was the worm and spur gear set worn out?  I had to do that fix earlier this year.

sw1tch

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Re: Repaired my garage door opener by myself
« Reply #2 on: June 27, 2016, 01:38:58 PM »
Great job; I always find the hardest thing is getting over those initial mental hurdles that mainly have to do with my own disconnect between not knowing how something works and the fear that I'll mess something up because I don't quite know how it works (and reconciling the 2 thoughts to realize that I can do it and most systems are NOT that complicated).

When I was living in my previous residence, the garage door opener broke the week of Christmas 2014 - basically the same issue that v8rx7guy stated where the vinyl wormgear had shredded off some teeth.  This was a new door opener that I bought when we moved in (so only about 4.5 years old at that point).  Part of the issue for me was that I had a family member install the opener and he left the chain very slack (as in hanging down somewhat and having to snag occasionally to get the door open).  Of course this was prior to my mustachian days and I can get extremely lazy and non pro-active, so I just let it do its thing.

Needless to say, it caught up to me and I had to figure out what went wrong - good thing there were youtube videos and how-to's available.  Needless to say, I received the worm gear on Christmas Eve and spent a few hours on Christmas day (in the cold btw) putting it in.  I also wised up and adjusted the chain to remove any slack from the system.
« Last Edit: June 28, 2016, 06:43:26 AM by sw1tch »

dbo

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Re: Repaired my garage door opener by myself
« Reply #3 on: June 27, 2016, 10:00:50 PM »
This gave me a little more confidence to tackle what has got to be an easy fix for my broken garage door opener remote.

 I'm sure that it can be done for under five bucks, with guidance from a few Google searches, but for some reason I haven't made the time or effort to learn how to fix it.

The original owner of my home left all sorts of maintenance notes at the house. On the inside of my garage door he wrote a reminder on when to oil the garage each year. Maybe I should pay more attention to those notes and learn a thing or two.


Uturn

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Re: Repaired my garage door opener by myself
« Reply #4 on: June 28, 2016, 08:03:39 AM »
Maybe it's a generational thing, or maybe I just grew up different from the OP, but it sounds like we come from different planets.  Ancient and mid-90's just don't go together in my head.  But then again, I do remember seeing brand new 8-track tapes on store shelves. 

Our society teaches us that we need to pay "experts" to fix stuff for us, but, honestly, there is so much you can do yourself.

Is this really how the younger crowd thinks?  If something around my house breaks, I fix it.  It's not a thought process, I just go get the parts, grab some tools, and go to work.  Unless it's an automatic transmission problem, that usually just leads to a nasty mess.  Does society really teach that, or have we just stopped teaching people that they probably can figure it out? 

Congrats on getting past the mental block of thinking you can't.  That is probably the hardest part of any job. 

MoneyCat

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Re: Repaired my garage door opener by myself
« Reply #5 on: June 28, 2016, 10:30:04 AM »
Maybe it's a generational thing, or maybe I just grew up different from the OP, but it sounds like we come from different planets.  Ancient and mid-90's just don't go together in my head.  But then again, I do remember seeing brand new 8-track tapes on store shelves. 

Our society teaches us that we need to pay "experts" to fix stuff for us, but, honestly, there is so much you can do yourself.

Is this really how the younger crowd thinks?  If something around my house breaks, I fix it.  It's not a thought process, I just go get the parts, grab some tools, and go to work.  Unless it's an automatic transmission problem, that usually just leads to a nasty mess.  Does society really teach that, or have we just stopped teaching people that they probably can figure it out? 

Congrats on getting past the mental block of thinking you can't.  That is probably the hardest part of any job.

I was actually taught by my parents -- and my school growing up -- that manual labor is something that the lower class does and that the middle class and upper class work solely in ideas and management. A lot of people from Generation X and the Millennial generation have been taught this and now it's all blown up in our faces in the new 21st century economy. Getting over that psychological hurdle can be challenging for a lot of us. Mustachianism has given me a new mindset, though, and as I feel much more confident about doing my own repairs as I obtain more skills. Technology has destroyed many industries, but it also makes previously exclusive skills a lot more publicly available.

Meikenstache

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Re: Repaired my garage door opener by myself
« Reply #6 on: June 29, 2016, 01:15:59 PM »
Congrats on breaking down the mental barrier! Youtube has been a game changer for me as well as I've found myself researching videos and trying to do handy work around the house instead of letting it fall in disrepair or paying someone to come do it.

That being said, safety first. My tortion spring recently broke on my garage door. While I've found plenty of videos online on how to fix it, I would rather pay a professional. A few years ago my dad and I replaced his on an older model garage and I about lost my head. No thanks on that repair haha!