On Monday, June 2, 2014 12:29:49 PM UTC-4, Jeff Wisnia wrote:
I think of myself as being pretty good about maintaining things around

our home, but I sure missed this one.



One of our 27 year old multipanel single width garage doors equipped

with an equally olde Craftsman chain drive opener started acting "funny"

occasionally for the last few weeks.



It would close OK most of the time but every so often it would get about

3/4 of the way down and reverse back to full open. And once I caught it

stopping about half way up when it was opening.



I tried cranking the up and down "force" potentiometers on the opener to

"full", but that didn't help.



I figured I was probably in for buying a new opener but decided to

remove the opener's cover have a look just in case the problem was

caused by an insect building a nest inside the opener housing and

interfering with a photoelectric motor speed monitoring gizmo as had

happened once maybe fifteen years ago.



Everything looked OK, so I put the cover back on the housing.



Then it hit me. I had dutifully oiled the door's roller wheel bearings

every couple of years but I never thought to oil the dozen panel hinges

on the inside of the door.



I put some oil on each of the hinges and presto, there was much less

noise from the opener when it was running and no sign of it reversing

during closing or stopping while opening.



The "thwock" you may have heard a couple of days ago was me, giving

myself a "dope slap" to the head. I would have felt even more stupid had

I bought a new garage door opener and went through the work of

installing it, probably with it having the same unoiled hinge problem.



Jeff

--

Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

The speed of light is 1.8*10^12 furlongs per fortnight.

What oil/lubricant do you recommend for the hinges and
for the roller bearings?

BTW, brass rat 78 here too.