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A Bit of a Rant: My Craftsman Garage Door Opener Has Plastic Gears!
By JLP | January 18, 2007
I try to limit my ranting on this blog but this is just too good to pass up.
The other day I came home, pulled into the driveway, pushed the garage door opener button, and waited for the garage door to open. It got about halfway up and stopped. The motor was still going but the chain was not turning. So, I unplugged the garage door and took it apart to see what was amiss. As I removed the cover, I noticed what seemed to be white dust. Here’s what I saw:
It wasn’t dust! It was plastic that had worn away from the main gear. Yeah, that’s right! The MAIN gear on my Craftsman Garage Door opener is plastic! I have no problem with plastic but why would they use plastic on a gear that is going to face the day-to-day torture of lifting a heavy garage door? I mean how much extra could it have cost to use metal gears?
Oh, and to top it off, the replacement gear costs $21!
Okay, I’m done ranting.
Topics: Rant | 26 Comments »
January 18th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
I had the same thing happen to me about six months ago. My garage door opener was the Liftmaster brand. I wasn’t too happy about taking apart the opener and replacing the gear in a hot garage on top of a ladder, but at least they sell the parts and instructions to fix it myself.
January 18th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
That’s pretty unbelievable or that’s some ridiculously hard plastic.
January 18th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Same thing happened to me. It almost seems as if they are designed to fail after so many years of use.
January 18th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Because of the weighted springs in place on most garage doors, it’s actually possible to turn the lifting mechanism by hand at the motor mount. Very little force is actually required.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Had the same thing happen on my 15 year old garage door last fall and couldn’t get the gear.
My understanding is that the gear is designed to fail to protect the more expensive motor. If the gear was made of metal, the motor would burn out and then you are replacing the entire opener.
January 18th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Bobby,
Although I never thought about it that way, it still doesn’t make sense. Why would better gears make the motor wear out sooner?
January 20th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Because if the gear catches, it’ll become a tug-of-war between the gear and the motor to see who “wins”. Either the gear “wins” by not breaking and having the motor burn out, or the motor “wins” by breaking the gear. You can solve this by having some intelligence in the motor to disable it if it detects that it can’t turn the gear, or by simply having the gear designed to fail if this happens. Since both would require a trouble call, this is probably the cheapest solution.
July 20th, 2007 at 6:09 am
This is for ‘John M.’ or “JLP”: Where did you go to get the gears to fix your opener. Mine just died on me yesterday (7/19/07) and it does suck to open the casing and see all that chewed-up plastic. I am in VA, but greatly appreciate any assistant you may have to offer. Thanks!
August 8th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
i also had to replaced the plastic gears after it broke off. however, now the opener would travel for about a foot then does the reverse and stops. i tried adjusting the up/down force with not luck. anyone got any suggestions on how to fix this. thank you.
October 7th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
My main gear went this week. I am having a difficult time finding a replacement. I am in Virginia. Do you know where I can find a replacement? Thanks, Eric
October 25th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Ummm.. this was the garage door opener for your kid’s dollhouse, right?
Geez, plastic?! Not lead? No aluminum or steel? Do you need to cash in your retirement annuity to buy any sort of quality ANYTHING these days? I’m pretty surprised to see such cruddy workmanship on something as (allegedly) heavy-duty as a garage door opener, I have to say. I think I will look at mine tomorrow, now!
Jerry
http://www.leads4insurance.com
December 9th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
The plastic gearing is actually designed to strip when the GDO is under excessive strain. The “sacrificial” plastic gear saves the more expensive parts (motor, circuit board, sprocket) from being damaged. Garage door openers are not designed to lift doors, they are only remote control devices. The lift is provided by the counter-balance system (springs), which is why you can raise 150-400 lbs of wood or steel up over your head with one hand (a perfectly tuned door can be raised with 2 fingers). If the gear has stripped you probably need work done on the door. Weak springs, blown bearings and low quality/worn-out rollers are typical causes. As for Genie quality, it has diminished greatly in recent years, particularly in regards to their electronics and I certainly hope you didn’t buy the Excelerator model as it tends to damage doors and can in fact be dangerous. Get the door serviced by a qualified technician. Hope this helps, Eric – Garage door professional.
December 31st, 2007 at 4:50 pm
I am looking for a garage door motor for the Craftsman Model #139.53600 (with PLASTIC gears)! Can anyone direct me to a place I can order it?
January 4th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Well, I’ve got the same problem on my chain drive. My question is, on Amazon, you can get the gear kit for $15 or you can get the sprocket assembly kit for $27. Seems like I only need the gear kit. How do you know if the sprocket assembly needs replacing?
Thanks, BD
January 27th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I suspect many more people spend the $150 to $200 for a new unit than mechanical spelunkers like us. I made the same grisly discovery last week.
Eric is right! The cause is a lack of regular maintenance (guilty as charged). A guide track cleaning / lubrication every so often would probably see the opener run forever.
The manufacturers could add a small plastic window on the bottom so you could see the beginnings of the destruction and act much earlier. My bet is that my opener has been killing itself for a year or more. Noticing a few plastic bits probably would have goaded me into repair action…
But now we need to find parts! So here you go – if these guys don’t have what you need, the opener wasn’t made on planet earth.
http://www.garagedooropeners.com/Scripts/default.asp
cheers
January 31st, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Ditto here. Garage door would not open. Looked inside the case to discover a nice ground up white powdery mess like the pic above. As a mechanical engineer, I completely agree with posting above – either burn out a $100 motor or a $15 plastic gear. This has nothing to do with “cruddy workmanship”, it’s actually called fail-safe design!
Anyhow, go to Amazon.com and search “Sears Craftsman LiftMaster Chamberlain Garage Door Opener Gear Kit – Part #41A2817″ $15.99, a few tools, and a couple hours work will save you a few hundred bucks.
And yes, I am ashamed to admit that it’s my fault that I haven’t kept the maintenance up on my garage door that caused the mechanical failure
March 18th, 2008 at 8:17 am
I found the same problem with my garage door opener two days ago. I purchased the sprocket assembly from a Sears parts store. The tech said the assembly was a little more expensive $29 versus $19 but was much easier to replace. It was really an easy repair although I took my time and did it correctly. Probably an hour and a half in total.
April 28th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Hats off to Eric. Most gear problems are caused by sloppy maintenance. My plastic gear stripped as well, but only because the springs on the garage door had stretched out and created undue stress on the opener. In fact, when I disengaged the trolley from the door, I had a hard time lifting the door manually from the closed position. Sure glad the gear stripped before the motor burned up. Unfortunately for me, I can’t seem to get the automatic opener to move more than a foot or so now without it reversing direction for another foot before it stops. I’ve tried everything to adjust the force, motor phase and limit controls to no avail. Time to invest in a new circuit board, or perhaps a new opener altogether unless somebody out there has an answer…..
May 1st, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I have the same problem. I found this site on who sell these kits for cheaper price and the shipping is much cheaper too.
http://www.cheapclicker.com/craftsman_gearSets.aspx
May 31st, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Has anyone ever heard of circuit breakers? instead of stripping out a cheap plastic gear or burning out a motor, let the circuit breaker pop. Boy do I wish someone would make a mold of this gear and cast it in aluminum.
August 8th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Boy, did I luck out. I put up such a fuss with Sears that they sent out a repairman and fixed it for free. Total labor was $159.00 and the gear was $29.95 for the kit. Gratis. Background. My first 1/2 HP Craftsman lasted 9 years before the gear striped. The second one lasted only 5 months. This is why I jumped in Sears DoDo. There were no excuses like the door was too heavy or jamming, hitting the stop bolt or anything. The door was no more than two years old and you could lift it with one finger. The serviceman was trying to give me all kinds of reason for failure but I countered each one. The gear just failed. Period. He did give me one good piece of advice. Grease the gear every two years. Maybe if I had done that to the first one it might have lasted, but not the second one! Was that info in the manual? Anyway, I’m happy for now. Thanks.
August 31st, 2008 at 9:14 am
I looked up the model numbers on ebay and found gears that were pretty cheap.
Replaced the gears and they went after 3 months.
Didn’t really find anything that needed maintenance.
Didn’t lubricate the gears.
I bought 3 sets at the time so now I get to repair it again.
I’ll lube eveything in sight this time.
larry
August 31st, 2008 at 10:44 am
All done.
The second time everything is easy.
It seems you really only need to replace the large gear.
The work is a different kind of plastic and didnt’ seem to wear much.
Larry
August 31st, 2008 at 10:50 am
“The WORM is a different kind of plastic”
February 16th, 2009 at 10:22 am
I’m not buying the argument that maintenance is the issue. I keep my system (Sears) well lubed. The door can easily be raised or lowered with one hand, but the drive gear still ground up to a powdery mess. There is nothing in the owners manual specifying that the drive gear needs lubrication in any way.The only thing I did notice was that the chain was stretched, but that didn’t seem to create a direct problem to the drive gear.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:28 am
I ran into the same problem and yes greasing the gears does help, even though the instructions say nothing about it.