Fixing Your Garage Door Opener By DIY

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Fixing your garage door by DIY via googling the problem

My garage door opener stopped moving the door one day.  My son pushed the button to open it, and the door made it half way up, but then stopped.  The sound of the opener changed from the regular sound to the sound of a vacuum cleaner running.

I googled the symptoms and found a youtube video on what sounded like my problem (the worm gear).  In fact, I was confident that the problem was a stripped gear just based on the sound it now made and some deductive reasoning.  To confirm my belief, the articles I found online stated that the gear only last 10 to 12 years (after all, the gear is plastic).

Since I was very busy I didn’t have time to fix the problem myself so I called a garage repairman to come out and fix it for me.  He came out and didn’t have the part!  He then told me that I had to replace the entire system, door, spring, motor and all.  Now this repairman was perhaps in his teenage to very early twenties (if that!) and I don’t think that he realized that I’m not a fool.  I laughed at him and informed him what I thought of his opinions since my house isn’t that old to begin with.  Unfortunately, I still had to pay him for coming out…  Now I could have tried another “more reputable” and experienced repairman, but since I had the google video and it looked very easy, I did it myself instead!

garage door opener gear replacement

So the first think I did was order the part from ebay (I needed a sears craftman garage door opener gear sprocket kit # 41C4220A) for $25 (free shipping).  Next, I followed the instructions in the following video series:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

I liked this video, especially because the repairman talks about getting the garage door timing set correctly, and demonstrates how to accomplish this!

I’m a DIY (Do It Yourself) kind of guy, so this worked well for me, if you don’t feel very comfortable doing such things, then I recommend not trying it!

I hope you found value in this post, I know I wish I had just did the job myself instead of calling someone out that tried to sell me an entire new system…

MR

5 thoughts on “Fixing Your Garage Door Opener By DIY”

  1. Unfortunately, “you need a new one” seems to be the common refrain from a lot of people who come out to do repairs, even when you don’t. Good thing you were able to fix it yourself.

  2. Googling or looking through youtube for help videos can provide assistance for far more situations than one might think. It’s almost a default move now, to look that way as a first step for some things.

    • Google has saved me so much money. I blogged out Google saving me money in the past, but it seems like it saves me more and more as time passes. Perhaps I’ll have a to do another article about how they save me money 🙂

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