Garage Door Opener and Track Replacement - Step by Step Guide

Hi there, my name is Nils with Learn to DIY, and today I'll be showing you how to install a garage door opener and to replace the existing one, and then we'll also be installing a belt drive system. The first thing we need to do is unplug the garage door opener, which is usually just to plug in the ceiling like this, and then next we're going to come over and release it from the track. Usually there's a rope hanging down, in this case the rope is missing, but it's this lever right here, all right, and now it can move freely without being engaged with the lead screwdriver system. So with the power turned off, we can now disconnect the old wires, but the key is you want to make sure to mark these now so that you know exactly what to connect where afterward. Now before I take all these off, it's also a good idea just to snap a photo of this with your phone, and that'll just make it that much easier to have a bit of reference for afterward. There we go. Next we need to identify the bolts that are holding the garage door motor in place. In my case I've got these two right here, and then two on the opposite side, and they just use a half inch wrench to release these. I'm gonna take these off, all right, and notice that I've got the ladder in this case right here to hold this, because the entire arm is attached to this motor right now. That's why I want to leave it right here until we're ready to take that arm down. So this entire track is hinging on this mount right here, so I'm going to release this nut here and take the bolt out, and then there's a cotter pin down here that needs to be pulled out, and then I can take that whole pin out as well. And this is the one that's attached to the garage door. So we've got the cotter pin, that pin, and at this point, here we go, and then all that's attaching the motor right now to the garage is just that little bolt right there. And so I'm going to lift up on that end a little bit, and then I'll be able to slide this out. But with that, we are now completely separated. With the old track and opener removed, we're ready to put together the new one. Now, the one I'm using here is a Genie system. This one has Wi-Fi and smart capabilities. It has battery backup, which is really nice, so that if the power goes out, this will still work, which is a pretty big deal. So the first thing we need to do is put together the new rail system. I had to purchase the extension because we're doing an eight-foot door instead of a seven-foot door. So before you get everything purchased, you want to make sure to measure the height of your garage door. If it's over seven feet, you may need to purchase an eight- or nine-foot rail extension, depending on what you've got. So I've got the eight-foot piece here, and that just replaces this one that comes in the kit. So I'm going to set that aside, not worry about that one, and we'll focus on this. First thing we need to do is put in our new pulley wheel. So this will slide in here. This is called a clevis pin, apparently. I've never heard that term before, but that's what Genie calls it anyway. So we'll put the pin in, and then this is a cotter pin, and we'll just thread that through here like so, and then that's it. This thing's ready to go on that side. And then we're going to install the carriage slider here, and you'll notice that it says door facing that way. And so the door is, this is going to go up against the garage door down here, and so you want to make sure that that's aligned in the right orientation. And then from there, it's actually pretty simple. We're going to put the rest of these, and we're just going to assemble this, kind of like tent poles, and just keep assembling here. And at the end, we're going to have our bracket on one of these, and then this guy is what actually attaches to the motor system of the garage door opener. So on the top of the garage door opener, there's a little shaft that sticks up, and it's got teeth in it, and that's what's going to slide right in here. So this can mount in there, and that's the gist of it for getting this thing ready to mount up onto the ceiling. Next, we have to put the belt on, and so I've laid out the belt. And keep in mind, if you have an extension kit, that comes with a longer belt, so you want to make sure to use the right one. And there are two different color and bolts on here. There's a brass or a gold-colored one on one end and a silver on the other. So we're going to take the gold-colored one and put it the door side over here. So over here, I'm going to slide this gold one here through the pulley, far end of the pulley, like so, and just get it kind of close to my carriage slider here. Then on the other end, so it's really important here that you check to make sure that you've got the teeth of your belt inside and that it's not twisted in any way. So I'm going to just check to make sure this is nice and straight all the way around. There are little gears on this rocket, so I'm going to use those. Again, making sure this is flat and not twisted up. And then I end up with a situation like this. On the carriage here, there's a little lever here to loosen or open or close this. And basically, when it's locked in this position, there's a little knuckle that comes up like that. And then when you put it in that position, the knuckle goes down and you can slide things right through here. If I do this, then that kind of grabs onto it and locks it in place. And here on the turnbuckle, there's a little arrow for the door side. And that's what the gold one goes into. This is not righty tighty, lefty loosey. This is lefty tighty. So I'm going to actually rotate this about one rotation, just enough to grab on. And then I'm going to slide it through here and then get that out of my way. And again, making sure that this is not twisted in any way, my belt. I'll get this started. And then you can just start twisting it counterclockwise. And it's going to be tightening both this side and this side simultaneously. And our goal is to get this taut to where it's not super tight, but it's tight enough that it kind of holds itself in place. And it's basically sitting about a quarter inch above the bottom of the rail. When you get it to that point, you know that it's tight enough and it's working against gravity sufficiently. I'm going to keep going a little bit. I'm just checking both ends to make sure they're in the proper place. So it's going to start to twist here. So you're going to keep an eye on that. It's definitely getting pretty tight now. I'll just move that little nut back a little bit to give myself enough room. Oops, other way. I think we're about there. So if I stand this up right now, you can see it's not sagging much at all. It's really in a good spot. But what I also see, let me look. It looks like I got twisted somewhere along the way there. I'm going to make sure this is untwisted. There we go. So this side had been a little twisted like that. I just had to untwist that at the turnbuckle. And I think that's a pretty good spot right there as far as tension goes. And so the next thing we're going to do is lock these nuts in place. And so to do that, we're going to use an adjustable wrench. This is 7 16ths if you have one of those. Okay, that's tight. There we go. So now that's not going anywhere. And then what happens is basically this thing will slide over. And then when you put it in the middle of the turnbuckle, you can lock it into place. And then the carriage here will move with the turnbuckle and with the belt. And that's what we want. Next, we need to assemble the rail onto the motor. And so this here should sit right on the sprocket on the driveshaft. There we go. So if you line those angles up, you should be okay. This bracket that we put in earlier is to help hold this onto the motor here, to the power unit. And then we're going to take the four screws. In this case, they're from the orange bag. And if you're using a different garage door type, then make sure to follow the instructions that yours have. But essentially, we need to fasten the rail onto the head unit here. Okay. Now we've got very limited space in this particular instance, but I've got to get this here to be able to receive the new rail. And that is not the right type of bracket. So I'm going to have to take that off. So I'm going to... All right, out with the old and in with the new. So we're going to mount this one. I do not see a hole that's going to work as far as the height here. So I might need to pre-drill that one on the left side and then use the one on the right side. So I'm going to start by putting the one on the right side and go from there. And while I'm tightening this one note here is you have to make sure that this bracket goes into a header. It has to go into solid wood. You cannot put this into drywall or into some fiberboard or something that's maybe flimsy because this is what's going to drive the whole garage door system. So you've got to make sure it's getting a really solid purchase into real wood here. There we go. Okay. So from here, we're going to line up the rail and the motor. We're going to set them up high so that we can just feed it into here, push the pin in and lock it in place. Now, one thing I haven't mentioned about placement on this, we already know where this one is supposed to be, but typically you would want to open the garage door, see where the very highest point, and that's as it's bowing across like this, you want to see where the highest point of clearance is on the garage door, and then put this up about two or two and a half inches. Check your instructions to see which one it is for your particular install, but two or two and a half inches above that point. And that's where you want the center of this piece to be. So that's how we came to that measurement. And in this case, this is where it needs to be. Now we'll put in a clevis here. Beautiful. Cotter pin. There we go. Actually, that's not going anywhere. Okay. Next up, we're going to thread through our emergency pole string here. Now, one thing to be aware of is you may need to reconfigure the brackets and the mounting for your hardware for the motor. As you can see up here, for example, we did have to use most of the same mounting that we had before, but we had to replace where before everything was going right here in the middle. Now we had to move it up towards the front due to the length of the track. And I built these little triangles and you can do that using the supplied brackets that come with it. And they cut with a pair of metal snips or tin snips. They cut pretty easily. And the tin snips are just, you know, eight or $10 for a set of them, if you'd like. When I initially installed this, this track here was way too close to the ceiling and this was mounted way up high. So I had to take it down and give it enough space for it to comfortably slide along the track. There we go. And when you pull that, that releases the carriage so it can slide along and then this garage door can move as it needs to. So we're going to move that back to wherever we need. In fact, I'll move it out of the way for the moment. Next up, we're going to put the elbow bracket into the garage door. Now, if you've already got a bracket in here like this, then you can leverage that. But if you don't, you may need to install the one that's provided and it sits as close to your top coasters, your top wheels as possible. In my case, the top of the door, that's as high up as we can go. I'm going to take my pins, another clevis, feed that through there, put the hairpin or the cotter pin in, and that's that. Now, ideally we're going for about a one o'clock, maybe less than 30 degrees as far as this direction. And in my case, I'm going to have to slide this. I can't be up here. It's got to be back here somewhat. And so I'll take this arm and you can either leverage this side if you need a little more distance, if you've got a taller bit, or in my case, I just need it to be as short as possible. So I'm going to use this side and we want to make sure that two of your bolt holes line up. There are some nuts and bolts here that we can feed through. There's one and another, and then another pin goes up top here. Now, if you have a taller ceiling, you're probably going to need to extend this out quite a bit more. I've only got about a foot of leeway here, so not a lot to work with. Then I'll pin this one off, tighten these down. Okay, that bracket's in there good. We've got our emergency pull string here, and now we're ready to move on to the motor end. Okay, next up, we need to wire our safety beams. And these are the little receiver and transmitter, the little eyes that look at each other and make sure that nothing gets stuck under the door or crosses under the door while it's trying to close. So on this particular garage, we've already got some installed, and they're actually running up one side and over to the right. And there, they're both connected to the right receiver or transmitter and then going only one wire to the power head. So I'm going to see if we can leave that wiring in place and if it will still work. In my instructions for this new genie door opener, it requires that you have actually two sets of wires, one from each going up there. So I'm going to try this out and see if it works. And if that doesn't work the way it is with the one wire, then I'll run a new one up here and over to the power head. Okay, that's that. All right, now time to replace the wall console. Okay, so we've got a couple of slotted screws here. And good. Okay, now it's time to wire up our wall console. And this one is just barely long enough. I think it'll work. So it says the black and white one, which is the striped. Okay, so this right one goes in here. And these are kind of push in. You should be able to just push in if there's enough rigidity in them. And you can give them a little pull. Okay, so that one's in. And there we go. That one's in too. So those are both connecting and not touching each other. There we go. And now for, again, I'm trying this out with just the one set of wires, the one wire for the safety beams. So push one in there. And then one more on the other side. Okay, they're all hanging in there good and not pulling out. So that should be it for the wiring, unless I need to run the second safety beam wire up and in, which I'll do if I need to. But for now, I think we're ready to go ahead and test this out. I'm going to take our plug here, plug it into the wall. And let's see what we've got. Now because the wiring wasn't working the way it was originally set up, I ended up taking the old wires out and disconnecting them, putting the new wires on. And then basically I just took those and ran them up and along the ceiling. And it comes with all of the hardware to be able to do this. And then ended up taking that right over to the motor. That way. Okay, now that everything's up and running, we need to program where the bottom of the door should stop and then where it should come to when it's all the way up. So in order to do that, there's, in this particular case, there's three buttons. There's up, down or plus and minus and a program or set button. And so check your owner's manual on yours to see if it's a different configuration, but on mine to do the down, I'm going to hit the minus. I'm going to hold that until I get a blinking or solid blue light. There we go. And then it blinks. Okay. Then I can just use the minus key to go down and plus key to go up and tell exactly where I want it to go. So right now that's where it needs to be. So once it's there and you can hit the plus button to go up to adjust as well. I'm going to hit program. Okay. Then it goes solid again and turns off. That means it's all done. Next. I'm going to do the same thing with the up button. So I'm going to hold down the up button. Okay. Got a solid light. And now there you go. You can probably see on my thumb there, blinking light. So now I'm going to bring it up. And again, I'm just going to adjust it to where I want it to be when it's all the way up. So let's go to right there. It looks good. So I'll hit the program. Okay. It goes solid blue and then should turn off. Good. So that's all set. We know it's going to the right position on top and the right position when it closes as well. Next up, we're going to put in a battery and this battery is pretty easy to do. You've got a cable here for charging, and then you've got these two tabs that go into the top and there's little slots that they slide into. Just slide them in like this on the back. And then this one actually has some self-tapping screws. There's no screw holes in here for this to go into. So these are self-tapping so that they'll kind of drive their way in. I'm going to use my drill for this to make that a little bit easier. There we go. And then I just plug this guy in up here. It should clip in. That's it. That's all you have to do for the battery. So this will start charging. And then as soon as it detects there's no power going to it, it will run off the battery instead. And that just makes it so easy for power outages and things like that. So now to make sure everything works as expected, we do have a red light on one side, a green light on the other, and that means the two are talking to each other. And when I close it, if I start to walk in front of it, it picks up that there's an interruption in the beam and it'll turn itself, or it'll lift up, which is great. Now the other test that you want to run is take a two by four and put that in the middle here. It doesn't have to have a nail poking up, that's just added tennis bonus. And then when you close this, it should, even with a two by four that's only an inch and a half tall, should be able to detect that and know that something's in the way and then it should lift itself back up. So let's see if it does. Close. Okay, the test you want to run to make sure everything's working as expected. And with that, this garage door installation is complete. I hope you found this video useful. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave those in the comments section below. And if you've got any tips or things that I may have missed or not done quite right, I'd love to hear about it and we can learn from each other down there. So if you want to watch a little bit more about your garage and how you can actually organize it, I put together a whole video on some excellent garage organization tips, and you can check that out right here. I'm Nils with Learn to DIY. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.