10/10/2026
Got called out to a garage door wouldn't open. I got there and noticed the Genie garage door operator chain had come off the drive gear. I went to manually open the garage door and it appeared to be very heavy. As I lifted, I looked at the spring and cables. So was in place. I struggled to get it open fully, then went to lower it again. This was not normal, this was not a good start.
Something is wrong and making the garage door operator work very hard and pop the chain off. When I dove deeper into it, i climbed up on the ladder and what I saw was mind blowing.
This house is about 2 years old. New home, new garage door, new operator. Ever since it was installed, the horizontal tracks at the top that hold the door in the up position over the vehicle was 1.5" wider that the vertical tracks going up the wall. There was 3/4" on each side. That may not sound like a lot, but look at what it has done to the top rollers and brackets. They are supposed to be level, and rollers straight up and down, not tensioned / pulling on the rails.
They told me someone else came or 5 weeks ago, or the chain on the track, charged then and left. I knew something was wrong and I kept looking at the age of everything and needed to know why. I unbolted the back hang supports and measured the distance and reassembled, moving inward 1.5".
The difference between me and the one that came before...
1) Fixing the jumped chain, but finding the root cause.
2) They didn't get called back, I got praised for fixing it.
Opens easy, classes easily, but the poor operator has probably shortened it's life by 75% working extra hard to push / pull thru tracks outside of the tolerances.
