Question:
Periodically the garage door (Norelco Genie Trac-Drive), operated both
by the hard-wired switch and the remote, will go down/up a few inches,
then stop and retract a few. If I continually hold the button, I can
get it to continue to move, though it sometimes stops after a few feet
until I do it again. I've repeatedly lubed all elements, and indeed,
it appears that spraying teflon lubricant on the rail/track will
remedy it, for a few days/weeks, anyway. But I don't imagine that
should be necessary? I also tried white grease on it to last longer,
to no avail. This appears to be the issue, but fwiw where the rail
attaches to the front of the garage moves a bit when it starts/stops.
I thought that might be the problem, but then it's remedied by the
lubricating. Any thoughts?
Answer:
-On my sears screw drive gar. door opener. i had to get all the old greas
off .. i took the screw mechanizm down and put it in the back yard and
sprayed some brake cleaner on it and worked on it with a wire brush and
got all the old grease off... spraying some WD-40 on it before this
seemed to work for a day or so.. the WD-40 is a solvent and cut the
grease and let the old grease lubricate it but the real fix came with
removing the old grease that was full of dust/dirt... it then worked
like a charm....
-Use the clutch adjusting tool which came with the opener to take up the
slack. The tool should be left with you when the opener was installed by
installer.
I don't use grease, I spray twice a year with Teflon based lubricant.
Also I wet springs with it to prevent metal fatigue from metel-metal
rubbing. Dry springs will fail premature.
-The trac drive opener (no longer made because the tape that was
suppose to never break or fail did break & fail on a regular basis)
was not suppose to be lubricated. Plastic tape sliding through
aluminum shouldn't need lubrication. Where the tape goes trough the
gear box housing on the motor is just large enough for the the tape to
go through. Grease which collects dirt (as another post
mentioned)inside the housing and will not let the tape travel smoothly
through.
The drive gear (also plastic) in the housing also failed regularly.
Look at the holes in the tape, if they are starting to split the drive
gear is going bad & chewing up the tape and the shavings are also
collecting inside the housing. If you can find the parts they can be
changed but it's a real pain to do and you will still have a very
obsolete opener that makes a better paper weight than garage door
opener. Actually I'm surprised it lasted this long.
