Unscheduled Repairs

Note:  This is not the post I've been working on.  Someday I intend to get that post finished.

The last morning of my last day shift, the garage door opener decided that it had had enough.  I backed out and closed the door with the remote.  When it was halfway shut, the door stopped moving and the light on the opener went out.  It was pretty obvious that the entire unit was dead.  No power at all.

I released the door from the chain drive, closed it, and stuck a screwdriver in the rail so that the door could not be opened from outside.  I used the other garage door to exit the garage and go to work.

Below, a similar model to mine.  It's a Chamberlain with a chain-drive and an AC motor.

This may seem difficult to believe, but I was actually ecstatic that the door opener had failed.  I have been wanting to replace both openers for several years, but the wife was having none of it.  She pointed out that they work perfectly well, and that we should use them until they fail.  One of them finally failed, and so I gladly pulled the trigger on replacements for both of them.

I'm pretty confident that I could have repaired the faulty door opener - it's very likely just a failed component on the power supply board.  However, I wanted to get rid of them, and here's the reason:  They are noisy as hell.

We have a bonus room above the garage, and this is our TV room.  These door openers sit right below the floor, and when the garage door opens, you jump right out of your skin.  A 1/2 HP AC motor hums loudly, the chain drive is noisy, and there is a bit of a clunk when the door stops moving.  It's incredibly aggravating when I nap there, and the wife has to drive out of the garage.

I had already decided that I wanted a belt-drive unit with a DC motor, just to reduce the racket when the doors opened.  I chose another Chamberlain door opener in the hope that I wouldn't have to replace much of the mounting hardware.  This hunch turned out to be the case.  The model I chose was the B970.

Below, the Chamberlain B970 garage door opener.

The only piece of hardware that I had to replace was the bracket where the pulley end of the rail mounts to the wall above the garage door.   That silver thing bolted to the wood wasn't quite the same.

 Everything else bolted right up.  I did not have to replace any of the hangers for the main drive unit or the safety sensors.  I replaced the wall switches and the keypad, just because they have some nicer features.

There was an issue actually purchasing the new door openers.  The local Home Depot was sold out, and the nearest store who had two units was 100 miles to the South, in Lewiston.

So at 5:00 in the morning on my one day off, I drove to Lewiston, picked up two badly beaten-up boxes containing Chamberlain B970 openers, drove back up North.  Then I assembled, replaced and adjusted the door travel on both of them.

There was a bad moment when I realized that the new rail was a foot shorter than the old one.  Apparently I have 8ft garage doors instead of the standard 7ft doors.  After a brief period of panic when I thought that I needed to return the incorrect new openers to Lewiston, I realized there was probably a kit to extend the rail, that also had a longer belt.  This turned out to be correct, and fortunately the local Home Depot had these in stock.  With the new parts the door opener now fit.

Afterwards I programmed all the remotes, keypad, and wall units, as well as the wife's car - which has its own built-in remote.  It was a long busy day for a day off, but in the end it was well worth the effort.

Below is a video that compares the noise each type of opener makes. 

There are a few other advantages to these new openers:

• After the door up and down limits have been set, the DC motor slows to half speed during the final 6" of travel so that there is no slamming when the door finishes travel.
• Because the motor is DC, it can run off a battery when power is out in the house, and each opener comes with a small backup battery about the size of a motorcycle battery.  The opener can still operate the garage door, so you don't have to disengage it from the opener when power is out.
  
• The wall switches have a motion sensor, so when you enter the garage, the lights on the openers switch on, and later are shut off with an adjustable timer.
• The wall switches also display time and temperature - not needed, but kinda nice. 

So yeah - I'm pretty happy I finally got to ditch the old shake and rattle door openers.  The new ones are super smooth, and sound is not objectionable.  There is just a high-pitched whine when they operate,  that you can't even hear from inside the car.  

These units can be connected to your home network via a WiFi connection, so that you can open and close the doors with your cell phone.  I don't believe in that shit.  It's just another way for hackers to steal all your stuff.  Also you share info with the manufacturer to activate it - I just need the door to open and shut, not another spyware app on my phone, telling everyone when I come and go from home.

A couple of pictures of the new openers.  The manual says specifically not to use LED bulbs, as it will reduce the range at which the remote will function.  I already had this figured out, so I located a massive LED well away from the unit with an aluminum RF shield around the base of the bulb where the LED driver is located.

The wall button: Pretty nice.  You don't have to get up on the ladder to program the opener.

I also ordered one other item that I hope will make things even better, and it's these:  Nylon wheel rollers for the doors.  That will eliminate the metal-on-metal train track noise, and hopefully eliminate the remaining squealing.

Edit:  Done, and yes the doors have stopped squealing and creaking.

The bottom-most rollers had retaining bolts that were painted red, and I quickly figured out why that was:  They were under tension from the door opener springs via cables.  I had to get some assistance to re-install those brackets.

The only fly in the ointment with this new arrangement is that the shop door will not work with the new remotes.  So I'm going to have to replace that one as well, or find a universal remote, as soon as I can dig one up.