Garage Door Only Opens A Few Inches Then Closes

This is another very common problem we hear described by customers.

Garage door only opens a few inches then closes. Look for trip arms or clips attached to the opener chain. My garage door only opens a couple of inches and stops posted by ali tyler on wed oct 01 2014 01 07 pm. A broken torsion spring will also cause the door to slam closed instead of closing gently. These may be metal plates screwed on to the chain plastic snap ons dojiggies with flexible metal arms attached etc.

The door appears to get hung up on something or a sensor seems to be telling the door not to close. It sounds like the limit settings need adjusting. Unfortunately this problem is not usually a do it yourself fix like the safety photo sensors we talked about in a previous blog post. You can usually tell if a torsion spring is broken by looking at it.

In order to fix this you ll want to make small changes to the close limit setting until the door opener knows to stop once the door has reached the floor. If i continually hold the wall mounted remote button in the garage the door will go down but makes a loud rumbling about six inches from the floor which may or may not have anything to do with why the door will not close. You have an open limit and a close limit on your garage door opener. Liftmaster garage door opener only closes a few inches and then reverses.

This brain can wear out in time so you could need a replacement. If the door starts to open but won t move more than a few inches the torsion spring may be broken. When the logic board wears out it can cause your garage door to close then open and vice versa without explanation. Your garage door s logic board is the brain of your garage door opener.

Garage door only travels a little way and then reverses does your garage door only travel a little way 6 inches or so and then reverse. If your garage door is closing fully and then reversing to open again then it may be due to a problem with the close limit switch. If door weight exceeds a certain amount the safety systems in the opener will stop opening and close the door again to prevent damage to the opener the door or anything that might be caught on the door. There will be two on the chain one for the opening limit and another for the closing limit.