Thread: Repairing roller doors

Just to tell you of my own experience with electric Roller Door instalation is: You install the door in the usual manner ie start the tension at "top dead centre" then give it 1.5 turns clockwise (? its been a while).Then you have to adjust the electric positioning and it should work.
My brother in law removed an existing door and I gave him a hand to fit it on his garage. No directions! So I just installed it as normal but the thing would only go up so far and stop then go down but pullup short of the floor. An electrician had it working fine in 3 minutes! Apparently it was only the positioning of the stops on the electrics not the tension on the door springs which I had originally thought it could be.
I hope this helps
Regards Rod

Rod,
Thanks for the suggestion, I will give it a go. Other suggestions from visitors most welcome.
Andy

When I fit the motors to roller doors, I first of all adjust the spring tension on the doors so that it is easy to open and close, aka one finger operation. Normally you adjust the tension by loosening the mounting bolts and twisting the center bar in the same direction as the opening door. Be careful that you have got hold of the bar with a suitable tool, eg pipe wrenches before loosening the bolts.
The motor lifters normally come with a weight bar to assist with the closing motion.
If you cant open the door at all with either the motor or by hand, then either the gearbox in the lifter is broken and jamming it, or you have something jamming the door such as the original door locking mechanism (normally a bar that slides into slots in the door runners).

Hi Cravehaven,
Thanks for this advice. I believe it must be the tension on the door or the spring. There is nothing blocking its path and the motor is fine. I think my problem arose when it first stopped working and I listened to some advice telling me to try and fix it. I should have just switched it to manual operation until I could afford to fix it or read up on how to fix it.

My mistake was removing the bracket that is fixed to one side of the garage wall. I think you know what happened next! When the nuts were removed, the bracket spun around to unwind. Fortunately, I was out of harms way! I fixed it back onto the wall just to give that aesthetic appearance and to obviously close off the garage to the outside world while I bought some time that I could attempt to fix it.

I guess the only way to fix it would be to remove the door in its current closed state and start again?? Or do I not remove it, unbolt the wall bracket and try to rotate the bracket to 'finger lift' tension? Given that the door is currently in the closed position and will not open do I tension the rod in the direction of OPENING the door or CLOSING the door?

Any more advice on how to do that would be appreciated.

Andy

The standard approach is to use a pipe wrench to rotate the bar and then tighten the ubolts before letting go of the wrench. Get a new grip on the bar, loosen the bolts, rotate the bar, then tighten the bolts again. Before testing, tighten the ubolt at the other end for security.
What I have done on a couple of doors is to drill a couple of 1/2 inch holes near the end of the bar at 90degree positions around the pipe so that I can get a couple of levers such as big screw drivers into the holes and then twist the bar.
You do the final tensioning with the door up because there is less tension on the spring in this position.
You rotate the bar in the same direction as the door moves as you lift it. Normally this would be pulling the lever/wrench downwards. ie if you are looking at the door from inside the shed you would attach the wrench so that the handle is as high as possible and then pull it down and towards you.
Definitely dont remove the door or the brackets as the doors are quite heavy. All you need to do is tension the spring. Make sure the motor is in manual mode before you start.

G'day andy, I've probably put up at least a half dozen of these things , all from the new strapped up situation of course. It sounds like your door is fully down and you have to retension it. It has to be up on the brackets with the u bolts in position but loosened off. Have somebody just hold the door initially while you turn the axle in a clockwise direction with a small stiltsons( 2 pair are better so you can keep the tension on with one and then apply more tension). Have your mate holding the door let it ride up with the tension being applied ,to about a foot from being fully opened and then put a wedge between the bottom angle of the door and the door roll. This wedge needs to be about a foot long with a 45 cut on both ends. At this stage you can apply more tension with the stiltsons without fear of the door rolling up.Just guess the tension, tighten the u bolts and try it out manually. If it's a bit slack, loosen the u bolts and put a bit more tension on. Hope that helps, - as far as the electrics go, I wouldn't have a clue. Cheers Lenco

Thank you all for your suggestions and help. Sounds like I might be able to get it done with some help. Thanks again.
Andy

sounds like a silly comment, but SWMBO had this problem, when i got home two days later (luckily the car was out) i "unlocked" the garage door. it then worked fine. turns out she had locked it which had pushed the long bar through the slides, if you know what i mean.

if the door is electric and you have photocells you might find they are getting condensation on them and the motor this there is an obstruction. this happens in the uk quite a lot. all you can do is clean them.

alternatively, take the box cover off when the door is closed and look at the anchors attaching the top slat to the shaft. you may find if the anchors are plastic they are broken. if this is the case then replace them and reset the limits on the motor.

Myers Garage Doors | serving the south east of England

Hi, I have a roller door that rolls up crucked, when it is rolled down it looks like the drum part is sloping downwards. When the door is rolled down it does not roll down square and when you roll it up it seems to bunch on the right side and push out futrther as you roll it out. The door is longer that the opening so the apron does not fully unwind. Has anyone got any clues on how to correct this It;s giveing me a large aamount of frustration, the opening is square and the brackets are level .