In praise of Wayne Dalton garage door and opener

It was at least a couple of years ago, I picked a Wayne Dalton sectional garage door at the local hardware store. The installers told me I had to get a new opener and sold me a Wayne Dalton jack shaft type, or torsion type, wireless. I didn't know why I had to get a new opener, and I wasn't happy with the price of the opener, which wasn't much cheaper than the door itself. But I let them because they were that at my garage already. I didn't do any research and let my wife coerced me into the hardware store to get a new door. I knew WD is trouble when I tried to replace the remote control that I lost. That was a few years ago. But I'm glad that I ran into two geeks who picked the WD opener. Perhaps you couldn't get anything more expensive and less time to install than this. But I'm happy for the 1st time after so many years.

My old garage door was the one piece, very thick and very heavy wood door type. Indeed it was welcomed to donate those doors to Mexico to build houses. The spring counter balance was trouble when I moved in, and had been trouble since. Despite the thickness, it was not flat. I learned to lubricate and adjust the counter balance, and to replace them altogether. But it was worse as time went on, relying on the brute force of the opener to pull the door open, and gravity to shut it.

I didn't remember but the reason I agreed to get a new door was because my wife crashed her car on the door twice, from inside! Every time there was significant damage to her car, but not the door though. The door was too imperfect and too heavy for me to fix.

For the new door, I always felt that the two geeks didn't do a good job. The tracks didn't look precisely installed, and the wooden planks that they added didn't look professional. I felt that they were in a rush. I felt that they sold me the most expensive drive on their truck and the easiest one to install.

To add insult to injury, I crashed into the garage door a couple of years ago. I think it's aluminum or steel. But unlike my wife, the door got damaged instead of my car. Actually that's a good outcome. Fixing the door should be cheaper than fixing the car. But I have to replace two sections, which is about half of the door. Since the door still works and you can't see much different from the outside, I never replaced anything. So everyday I looked at the bent sections from inside the garage.

I sensed that WD is trouble when I tried to replace the remote control that I lost. Although I do not have much problems, the customer service seemed scared about the model I had. I took the chance to ask some questions about home link compatibility, but they can't answer anything. I just brought a WD direct replacement from elsewhere.

I think what happened is that WD is very innovative. The ideas are pretty good, going towards an intelligent home, with the garage door integrated with other controls. The problem is, how can they compete with other companies for good electronic engineers? They may out source the design but who's going to support them?

The worse problem is that who is going to install the openers? Openers used to be very simple, just a motor, with belt, screw or chain drive. Installers would hate to install something very different. They would not know anything at all if the electronics have problems. And actually the drives can be installed by the owners. There's not much to do as a professional installer. Actually the whole garage is quite easy to install, relatively speaking.

Why I praise WD after so many years? Because my garage is completely screwed up one day. The installer didn't left any documents, only warning labels and a terse, tiny, programming sheet on the wall. I had absolutely no idea how the door works. And WD seemed to have exited the drive business, and perhaps the Torque Master type of doors.

I was looking for the emergency release like my old door. It disconnected the door from the opener alright, but how am I going to lift the door? The old door will just swing open. I tried to lift the door with great difficulty, and soon it was completely jammed close.

I opened the drive cover with difficulty. I had no manual. To my surprise I saw two batteries. I remembered they call it backup in case of power outage, but actually the motor need to be battery operated. I checked the internet that the batteries had a couple of years of life. They cost too much. I was trying to jump start it with my car battery, when I realized that the batteries were still good.

I thought the electronics were screwed up, so I connect the motor directly to the battery. The motor just gave out sparkles but didn't move. I thought I had to replace the drive, the damaged sections, and maybe the whole door.

Then I found the installation manual of my door, but not at the WD website! There was over 20 steps with diagrams. It looked good but there are 1 in 10 words that I don't understand. It should be easy if you have some idea of how the door is designed and operates.

There's no trouble shooting procedures. The thought of going through 20 odd steps through the installation daunted me. I parked the cars outside and left them there for a week, doing nothing. Before that, the cars were trapped inside the garage. I had to unscrew all sectional bolts so the sections could be lifted up one at a time. With the help of my wife we managed to lifted the sections up to the ceiling rail, let the cars out. My wife decided to drop the sections down that night. But the bottom section wouldn't go completely down, leaving a pet height opening on the ground. Worse still, the bottom was one side higher than the other. I also decided that we should not put the top section down because it might be difficult to get them all up again. So we have only three sections as the garage door, with a bottom slanted opening and the same at the top, for all the neighborhood to see.

Finally I went through the installation process. Very soon I discovered that there's nothing wrong with the hardware installation. The tracks were solid, though they are not perfectly horizontal and vertical, and there are gaps at the joints. The rollers guiding the sections easily comes off, but that's a feature, and the design is quite tolerant to imperfect installation.

Then I discovered what is jamming the door mechanism. It was the counter balance. On one piece swing doors, there is a large spring on each side. Although the door is damn heavy, you can swing it open fairly easily in the spring counter balance is installed correctly. For the torque master doors, the counter balance is in the form or wounded spring inside a small disc box at each end of the shaft.

The door is suspended by two cables. When the shaft turns, the cables are wounded onto the drum at each end. The counter balance is part of the drum. So if the cables are jammed, with all the tension on them, you cannot move the cables to the right place.

There is a bolt on each side to unwind the torsion springs. If you have no idea you just think that the bolt is just a bolt like any others at the door. They are mostly of the same size. The bolt is designed to be turned by an electric drill. I used hex screw driver bits to drive square sockets before. I thought it should be illegal. Now I know, for the first time, that there are square bits for sockets, silly me.

So I unwind the torsion springs until the dial is at zero, straighten out the cable, put the bottom section back on the ground, slide the other sections on top one by one, and screw them back together one by one. So if you install the tracks correctly, there's nothing to it for the sections. It doesn't need to be precise.

So I understand why the door can't be opened in an emergency. If the counter balance malfunctioned or the cables are jammed, the door is just too heavy to open. And even if you opened it, the loose cable will be jumbled up.

Then I tried to calibrate the two sides so that the tension is the same. I don't think it can be done easily, not on my old door anyway. You have to roll the cables a little and tighten the cables a little by the drill. You can't do the same on both sides equally. When I tighten the cables to the same number of turns on the dial, I felt that the tension in the cable are very different.

I tried it all over again by unwinding completely. It's the same. I think the torsion springs aged differently, or they suffer differently. What the hack. I just tighten until I feel that the cable is about the same tightness, and that the door can almost be opened by hand. There's nothing much to it.

Now the door is perfect. I don't know if I damaged the opener's electronic by connecting the battery directly to the motor. Indeed the opener seemed dead. Just when I think that I have to replace the opener, and have to install the conventional overhead opener, I remembered that there's one and only one thing to do.

On the wireless wall unit, there's a little toothpick for you to insert into a hole to start the installation. It doesn't start anything but I know what button to push when I opened the unit. When I pushed the button, the door went up and down twice and wallah, my garage door is all normal again.

All you need to install the opener is to put it right in the middle of the shaft and screw it onto the wall. The opener sense the torque, or more likely the speed, of the cables and vary the speed of the motor when the door is at different positions. There's nothing to measure. The door will close perfectly and open perfectly. The opener knows when to stop exactly.

The whole setup is a big advancement over the dumb openers. Sadly WD is exiting the opener business, even though the openers are still on sale. Or they are just scaling back the number of drives on the market in order to have sufficient support for them.

It's easy to install, tolerant to imperfections. Less moving parts. Quieter and smoother. And since there's intelligence, it's easy to provide more function such as opening a little bit for pets, delay close, and disabling the remote controls.

The mechanics and the motor can be very reliable. The electronics should be more reliable. But if there's trouble, who's going to shoot it? The jump from dumb openers is just too big. But you can't make the jump easier because you want all the features. For example, some jack shaft openers still require to run cables from the drive to the wall unit, which is on opposite ends of the garage!

If the electronics goes wrong, there's nothing much to do except to swap it out. If you are not supported by WD technicians they do not have the boards to replace yours. Sending it back to WD to "repair" seems too much trouble. If WD doesn't cover it, it may be too expensive to replace the electronics. Why can't they do it as if it's a TV? It's quite reliable and you don't expect it to fail, not initially anyway. It's guaranteed for a number of years and there's extended guarantee. And nobody is afraid to "repair" TV's although it really can't be repaired, just swapping out the bad boards and bad parts, or take it back to "factory" to repair, in reality you get back the old shell with everything new in it.

WD is the way to go, but they seemed to fail. I'll still recommend the wireless jack shaft drives, whether you install it yourself or not. But make sure that you are covered if the thing doesn't work initially. As with other electronics, if it works during the burn in period for a couple of months, it will not likely to fail for years. Have a look at the installation manual, and if you are clueless technically, you may want to cover yourself for at least 10 years. The WD service department seems to be afraid of any technical questions regarding electronics.