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Percival P. Cassidy Percival P. Cassidy is offline
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Default Wayne-Dalton iDrive garage door opener

On 12/29/08 08:03 pm Tony Hwang wrote:

We have had a Wayne-Dalton "iDrive for torsion springs" opener for a
little over three years. We had problems with it initially, but W-D
sent a replacement controller board and light unit.

Other than the unit having forgotten its settings a couple of times
and having to be "re-trained," it's worked OK.

Right before Christmas it started giving trouble, first merely buzzing
without moving the door, later starting to move the door but then
making a "ratcheting" noise without moving the door any further.

Had somebody come and check out the door today. He said it was not
significantly out of balance (but he adjusted one spring by half a
turn anyway) but said the opener appeared to have stripped the gears.

This afternoon went to a "real garage door company" to look at new
garage doors (the old one is wooden and getting waterlogged). While I
was there I heard somebody mention the word "iDrive" in deprecatory
tone of voice. It turned out that this was somebody from the
Wayne-Dalton distributorship, and he told me that even they try to
steer people away from the iDrive.

I'm going to see if I can get the iDrive replaced under the 5-year
warranty and use it with the new garage door that we probably will buy
soon. Otherwise this was a $250+ lesson on the perils of buying fancy
new technology.


You must have their older version iDrive which was battery hog.(you're
losing settings). I heard newer version works much better. Naybe you
should get a replacement?


The guy from the distributorship said that W-D has sometimes simply
shipped people new units, but I haven't quite figured out how to take
advantage of that. The warranty info. in the owner's guide says that
warranty claims must be made *in writing to the dealer*; the store where
I bought it no longer deals with W-D; one of the nearby places listed on
the W-D Web site as handling the iDrive is in the process of being taken
over and doesn't know which end is up; another said that since they
didn't install it I'd have to pay their labor charge to take it down and
examine it. W-D is closed this week.

I downloaded the service manual for the iDrive, but only a few parts are
listed as replacements. The worm gear looks as though it's integral with
the motor shaft (the motor is available), but there's no sign of the
pinion as a replacement part. It may be that even the dealer/service
dept. couldn't repair it, only replace it.

Perce