A garage door that won’t stay closed can be a frustrating ordeal especially if you are on the way out the door. Today we are in Sparta, NJ with a garage door that is floor reversing. As the door comes down, it hits the floor and then starts coming right back up. This most likely needs a travel adjustment. The garage door opener is trying to push it too far and actually through the floor, causing it to reverse.
On the side, you’ll see the dials for adjusting the travel. On the left of the garage door opener, you’ll see the down arrow. That’s for the down travel. You also see an arrow showing that if you turn it counterclockwise, you’ll add more down travel if you turn it the opposite way clockwise, it’ll take travel off, making it not close as far. So we’re going to use a flat head screwdriver to take probably about a half, maybe three-quarters of a turn off the down travel and see what that does for us. If your garage door won’t stay closed a travel adjustment is a common possible fix.
Now it’s coming all the way down, hitting the floor, and stopping. Perfect. Also on the back, you’ll see similar up and down arrows. This is for the force. This is how hard the opener is going to pull and push to open or close that door. This being an older opener, I added a little bit of push to the downforce. So that way when it hits the floor, it’s got a little bit more pressure to stop and stay closed rather than wanting to reverse thinking something might be in the way. This is an older opener from 2003, but it’s still working so we’re going to keep it, but it’s probably time for them to start thinking about replacing it.
On this door, the bottom section has some damage to it from either being dropped or maybe caught on the top of the car. This made it go a little bit wavy, so if you’re having a little bit of a hard time getting it to seal the floor, which is another reason why the customer wants the opener to push a little bit harder, to try and make up those gaps until we decide whether we’re going to change the door or possibly only replace this bottom damaged panel
In conclusion, the customer complained of a floor reverse. It hits the floor and comes back up. Simple travel adjustment and adding a little bit more to the down pressure seemed to take care of it. I did note that it is from 2003, so almost a 20-year-old machine. Generally speaking, these machines with normal usage lasts about 8 to 12 years.
This machine is on its way out. I did warn the customer that sometimes these travel adjustments on these older machines don’t take. They keep trying to move around where they start and stop. At this point, on a machine this old, we recommend replacing it, but we opted, for now, to keep it going and to see how long it will last.