Does your garage door opener work?

[mtiede]

I have successfully programmed the garage door opener. But I have to get the car very close to the garage door before it will finally, begrudginly trigger the opener. I have had the same experience with my Ford Windstar and its programmable opener. Is it just my garage door opener receiver or has anyone else had troubles? How well does yours work?

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[jnjrowland]

My opener works from the street and the driveway is about 130 feet long so there is a pretty good range on my opener. One thing I did do was to make sure that the "receiver" on the opener is extended fully down. It is a small wire that acts as the antenna for the opener and by extending it fully it improves the reception.

How well does your opener work with the original remotes? Do they have better range than the car?

JR

[Driller]

I've noticed the same issue with my door opener too. It seems to have a much shorter range than the remote from the door opening unit. Also, it seems to take a little longer for my garage door opener to engage which results in my Type "A" personality, clicking again and stopping the door just as it begins to open. I do that wayyyy too often.

[mtiede]

The regular remote doesn't do great either. I certainly can't work it from the street which is only about 50 feet from the garage. I tried yesterday to straighten the antenna wire, but if anything, that made it worse.

I also looked at Sears yesterday to see if I could get a total replacement for the Raynor receiver. They don't sell them separately anymore. Only included in the opener itself.

I will be doing more experiments today. I might add a long wire to the current antenna wire and see if that helps. If it does, I will run it to the front of the garage door, or maybe move the receiver to the front of the garage and run a wire from there to the opener.

What a nuisance our luxuries can sometimes be

I lived 3 years in West Africa in the Peace Corps and would have given my eye teeth to even HAVE a car and a garage and a remote control

[mtiede]

I tried fooling with the antenna wire. I also tried adding about 8 feet of extra wire to it. Of course, it only made a little bit of difference. The regular remote definitely does better. It irritates me to have this homelink in both my vehicles and I still have to carry the actual remote because the homelink doesn't work well enough. My guess is the regular remote puts out a stronger than normal signal and homelink is too week for the receiver.

What opener/receiver do you have? I might buy a new one if I knew it worked better. Also, is yours a "rolling" code system?

[jnjrowland]

I had a problem with the original door openers in that they could not be programmed at all (some builder's specials with generic one button opener). So in order to be able to use the visor buttons I bought the homelink adaptor receiver from the homelink website. Since installation the range has been great. I just put the new reciever in the ceiling electic outlet and attached the leads to the same terminals as the existing manual door button. A simple install (much simpler than the instructions) and everything works fine as that receiver comes with a remote that is used to program the homelink in the car.

JR

[mtiede]

Aha! I think I have fixed the opener problem. I read somewhere to keep the receiver away from metal. Well, of course, the receiver was directly attached to the metal opener box, which was hung from metal supports where went into the ceiling near the very large metal I-beam.

So I relocated the receiver box on the wall above the garage door and ran 3 wires back from there through the plastic wire sleeve to the opener box.

Tonight I was able to open the door from the street. I was never able to do that before even with the original remote.

We'll see how it is tomorrow.

If that hadn't worked, I would have ordered the HomeLink receiver, which I didn't even realize they sold.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions.