Garage Door Problems

I would normally consider myself to be a handyman but I can’t figure out what’s going on with my garage door and I need some help so I don’t go crazy! My garage door closes when I’m inside the garage but when I get outside of it, my remote opener closes the garage by about 3 feet and then goes back up and the garage light starts blinking. I thought there was a communication issue between the remote and garage but when I come back to the garage, the garage opens with no issues. Any thoughts on what it could be?!

Be sure the electronic eyes are aligned and have you lubed the hinges lately? I don’t understand why it would work when you are inside but not outside.

You don’t have a neighbor or wife pranking you do you?

Either dirt or an alignment problem with the photo eyes?

Yes. Some of them are very picky to get aligned.

I have the same issue but what I have found is that the electronic eyes are blinded by the sun. My house faces south, so the eyes are aligned east-west. When the sun is low and at just the right angle, it can blind one of the eyes, thus the garage door won’t shut because the “beam” has been broken. My only fix has been to place an object to cast a shadow over the blinded eye.

how does the door open and close by hand? A properly adjusted spring should hold the door about 3′ off the ground. When was the last time the rollers and hinges were lubed?

brunn wrote:

I have the same issue but what I have found is that the electronic eyes are blinded by the sun. My house faces south, so the eyes are aligned east-west. When the sun is low and at just the right angle, it can blind one of the eyes, thus the garage door won’t shut because the “beam” has been broken. My only fix has been to place an object to cast a shadow over the blinded eye.

Try swapping the eyes around, the sun shouldn’t blind the transmitter

With Chamberlain openers count the number of light flashes, I know 3 flashes is too much force required and 10 flashes is a sensor issue

brunn wrote:

I have the same issue but what I have found is that the electronic eyes are blinded by the sun. My house faces south, so the eyes are aligned east-west. When the sun is low and at just the right angle, it can blind one of the eyes, thus the garage door won’t shut because the “beam” has been broken. My only fix has been to place an object to cast a shadow over the blinded eye.

I used a toilet paper roll piece taped over one sensor in a previous home with a bad sun angle, worked perfectly.

All great suggestions , but if it was an alignment issue , why would it still work from inside but not the remote ? Curious because one of mine acts the same way

We had a similar issue a couple years back, thought it was light interference but switched out sensors and that didn’t do it. Light fault flashed four times for ours indicating a sensor issue. Would work on the local hard wired button if you held it but not the remote. Ended up switching out the control card on it for like $70. Has worked perfectly since. This was a linear garage door opener from the late 2000s.

When you close it from inside, are you holding down the button, or pressing and letting go? At my old place, holding down the button would override the eyes, and it would close, but just one touching it with either the remote or the interior button it would fail out. Was the electronic eyes out of alignment.

Have you swapped out any garage lights to LED bulbs? I have seen some weird things happen with garage door openers when an LED bulb with a bad frequency gets installed. Typically it’s the cheaper LED bulbs that cause a problem.