How to fix the garage door opener lights?

Question

The lights on our garage door opener no longer turn off. When you press the button on the wall mount, you can hear that there's something in the garage door opener trying to do something, but nothing's happening. The lights stay on. They even stay on, instead of flashing, when you go across the safety sensor.

What should we look at inside the unit itself to try to fix it? It's not that old of an opener; we really don't want to replace it.

The door opens fine. We have a separate button to just turn the light on and off.

Answer 1

Most openers have a timer circuit that is activated when you initiate an opening or closing. The light remains on until the timer times out and then it goes off.

Some timer circuits are variable and you can set the "on" time to fixed settings and some have an infinately variable "on" time setting. Check out your system's timer circuit. It could be a bad board or a setting on it.

Answer 2

It sounds like you have a bad circuit board. The timers on garage door are usually set on 4 1/2 minutes. Yes, some are vairable but only from 1 1/2 to 4 1/2 minutes. If your door is operating both ways with remote and button, going both up and down, then it is not your eyes or gears. I would say the light control went out. Before you replace board though, make sure wires are connected correctly on board and wall button. For example, if it is anything made by chamberlain, on the back of button it has one terminal labled red and one white. If you have a red wire attached to the red terminal on button and it goes to the white on back of opener it can cause problems.

Answer 3

If your door does not move at all but the light comes on, you might have a bad drive gear. If so the light timer will not start until the motor stops. Without the gear turning this will not happen. The overload activates and everything shuts down. If it is a Chamberlain (or Sears), a new gearkit and driveshaft is around $125 installed. This is a tough one because I do not know the operator make. E-mail me if you want.

Answer 4

My problem that's lasted over years is that the bulbs don't reliably seat in the sockets so with expansion and contraction with the weather, I'm constantly tightening or loosening the bulbs to make contact. This is true for both bulb sockets I attribute it to shoddy/cheap design of the sockets. Any suggestions as how to fix by inserting something into the socket that makes better contact between the bulb and the terminal contact?

Answer 5

check for the lock on the wall button, if there is one. also check to make sure the sensor lights are on and are pointed at eachother, and the eyes are free of dirt and cobwebs. sometimes even the slightest bit of misalignment or dirt in one of the eyes can make the opener think there is an obstruction. if that doesn't work, unplug the unit for a few seconds and reprogram everything.

Answer 6

how much is a circuit board for a Genie powermax 1500 model garage door opener?

Answer 7

My lights stay on for more than 5 minutes on my Genie Pro Max PMX 500IC is there a way to program the timer for 3 Minutes?
Thanks

Answer 8

I rated GTB's answer good. On your sensors, you have a master and a slave beam. Try cleaning the beam and receiving lenses.

Answer 9

If it's not that old check with the company who installed the doors to see if it's still under warrenty, even if it's not they should be able to fix them.

Answer 10

yeah bad circuit board most likely.