Garage door won't open

[mason dixon]

Make: Genie Intellicode from mid 90's

History: Serviced earlier this year, the guy greased the heck out of the long screw. No problems until Sunday 7/18.

Problem: Went to open door, went up slowly to about 3 feet and stopped. Closed just fine, tried to open again to see what the problem was and it went up 6 inches, 3rd time 1 inch and now won't go up at all. The springs are not broken, and the screw moves just fine, seems like something isn't catching? Any ideas? Thanks.

[John1949]

Pull down the safety rope on the carrage, (the carrage is the black plastic that runs up and down the screw drive) Work the door manually and besure it is working smoothly.
If It is, then more likly it is the carriage, the carriage has alum. teeth that grab on the track and if worn will not lift door.
Replacement of this carrage is a pretty simple task, Unplug operator and with door down, go to the front of the screw drive track and unbolt the 1/2" nut, move the screw drive slighly( right or left) and slide the carrage off and reinstall new.Besure to install carrage in the correct direction, I believe the Genie's have a arrow on them and says to door.
Besure to connect back to door arm and run door manually and check to be sure that hit hits the limit switch ( piece of plastic or metal that the carrage hits to tell the operator it time to stop).
Not sure if these can be purchase at Lowes or Home Depot.

The only type of grease that should be used is a Garage Door Operator Grease,(White Lithium) if you use regular gease and live in a cold climate area you could do damage to the operator as grease will become hard in the cold.

[aaadvantagedoors]

After disconnecting the safety rope and testing manually, the next logical step would be to operate the opener while it is disconnected from the door to see if it goes up all the way or not. If it doesn't, the means the opener's busted and it could be a number of things, but if it does, then it could either be the door or the opener. If the door works fine manually, there's a good chance it's the opener, but that's not necessarily the case. Try decreasing the sensitivity switch to the lowest setting on the opener, connect the opener to the door, then try again. If still no luck, it may be time for a new opener, considering it's from the mid 90's. It's usually not worth spending any money on such an old opener.