The automatic garage door opener finally is working again
 

Lots of cool videos on youtube about installing, repairing and
adjusting garage doors. The safety sensors seem to be a common
problem. One of mine had quit working. 40 bucks at Lowes! You can get
them on amazon for around 20 bucks or e-bay, while looking at them at
Amazon in one of the comments,
" if you are handy with a soldering iron, crack open the sensor and
replace the 470micro farad Cap. For just pennies you can repair it
yourself. These caps will dry out over the years, and I fixed mine like
this."
Which is what I did, 1.61 for the capacitor at Radio Shack, it was
longer than the original and I just drilled a hole in the case and let
the end of the capacitor stick out.
For those that are interested,
The sensors generate a signal which has to be received by the main
controller circuit board in the unit. This is why you cannot simply
wire around them,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbmufXgpl14

The automatic garage door opener finally is working again
 

"Fat-Dumb and Happy" wrote in message ...
Lots of cool videos on youtube about installing, repairing and
adjusting garage doors. The safety sensors seem to be a common
problem. One of mine had quit working. 40 bucks at Lowes! You can get
them on amazon for around 20 bucks or e-bay, while looking at them at
Amazon in one of the comments,
" if you are handy with a soldering iron, crack open the sensor and
replace the 470micro farad Cap. For just pennies you can repair it
yourself. These caps will dry out over the years, and I fixed mine like
this."
Which is what I did, 1.61 for the capacitor at Radio Shack, it was
longer than the original and I just drilled a hole in the case and let
the end of the capacitor stick out.
For those that are interested,
The sensors generate a signal which has to be received by the main
controller circuit board in the unit. This is why you cannot simply
wire around them,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbmufXgpl14

Good job and nice video. I've found that capacitors are a problem area in a lot of gadgets. My car died once and the mechanical traced it to the computer. Before buying $$$$ another one, I pulled it open and could smell a burned cap and then saw one that was leading. Replaced it for 15-cents. Turns out (digging online) that those caps were known to the car maker that they were failing after 3-5 years. (One of the few times I actually fixed something, my wife says. LOL!)

The automatic garage door opener finally is working again
 

On 5/28/2013 1:19 PM, Y'all Gibbons wrote:


Good job and nice video. I've found that capacitors are a problem
area in a lot of gadgets. My car died once and the mechanical traced
it to the computer. Before buying $$$$ another one, I pulled it open
and could smell a burned cap and then saw one that was leading.
Replaced it for 15-cents. Turns out (digging online) that those caps
were known to the car maker that they were failing after 3-5 years.
(One of the few times I actually fixed something, my wife says.
LOL!)


Good thing you were able to repair an expensive vehicle computer. There
are companies that rebuild the evil things and sell them to you with you
trading in your broken one. I replace capacitors all the time in AC
units after a thunder storm comes through the area. One of my customers
with a pizza place had two Viewsonic monitors fail and it turned out to
be an electrolytic capacitor in the power supply that was failing in
many of that model. I replaced them with the same capacitance value but
with capacitors that had a higher voltage and temperature rating. The
monitors are in the kitchen where they are exposed to higher
temperatures than what would be in an office setting. I imagine you
would replace the capacitor in your vehicle computer with at least one
with a higher temperature rating because it gets hot in a vehicle. ^_^

TDD