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dcay

Success repairing old Craftsman Door Opener

dcay
12 years ago

Hi,

I found this this forum a couple of days ago looking for advice and solutions to the problems I was having with my old Craftsman 139.53611 (41A3063) Garage Door Opener. I am writing to let everyone know how my GDO was fixed. It would stop working randomly. I was able to get it working again by turning the motor shaft manually or slapping the unit on its side. I thought it was the main gear binding, or then electric motor getting weak, or then the capacitor going bad, or dreadfully a bad circuit board. Well I had a spare GDO unit for parts and swapped out the gear, then motor, then capacitor. That did not help at all. I disconnected the chain and while observing the internals working I noticed some arcing on the circuit board at a solder joint in the dim garage light. As it turned out, the solder was visibily cracked at a minuimum of 2 joints. I re-soldered these 2 joints and about half of the remaining joints, adding solder when it appeared necessary. Success, the unit appears to be fixed now.

I figure the recent cold weather here in Houston, TX separated the joint and making the unit stop working. My working and banging would reconnect the joint for a day or two.

My advice is to look over the back of your circuit board closely if the diagonsis of your opener is to a circuit board failure, it might be an easy fix to re-solder/re-wet the suspect solder joints on your circuit board. This was an older unit without the troublesome LED sensors, so I wanted to keep this unit going. These boards are getting old and the solder joints crack just like circuit boards in my old car had done. I am glad I did not have buy a new board for $80 and go without an opener for another week.

This is a very good Forum, and Dan is quite helpful to everyone here. Everyone has helped me even if they did not know about it.

Thanks all,

David