3gh+SguwHeMBRDIUPl5zYNEmuMLe5QwReMH1xl0vjIo GarageDoorDoctor: November 2006

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

With the cold weather, your garage door opener will sometimes act up. What happens, is the grease will harden due to the cold weather, and create the effect of something in the way on the door. The reversing feature will cause the door to stop and go back up. If you hit the wall button to get it to go back down, it will usually go down a little further. After a few tries, it will finally go all the way down. The way to fix this, is sometimes by lubricating the springs and rollers with a silicone based spray that you can buy at Lowe's or Home Depot.

If just lubricating the garage door doesn't work, you should check the down force sensitivity on the machine. Note: Don't get crazy, turn the down force knob just a little to get the response you want. If the slot is on3 for instance, turn the knob to 3 1/2 to 4..not all the way to 10. What will happen if you turn it to 10 is, the force put on the machine to lower the garage door may be so strong that if it comes in contact with a person, car, or animal, it may not reverse the way it should.

The red emergency handle should be long enough for you to reach it. Special attention should be paid if you own a SUV like an Excursion or Tahoe with luggage racks. Sometimes the long red handle will get tangled around the luggage rack when backing out of the garage, and release the door from the opener, causing you to push the garage door into your yard. It makes for a bad day. Usually, both the garage door and the vehicle sustains damage. Hope this helps..til next time, keep the questions and comments coming. :-) Joe