Hi, there! This video’s going to show you how to do a garage door opener installation.
So my garage door opener went bad, and I figured, “Hey, why don’t I shoot a video and show
you how I did it?” So I’m going to be installing a Chamberlain garage door opener.
If you look online, Chamberlain garage door openers get awesome reviews, and that’s
one of the reasons why I chose mine. So let’s get to it. If you need to do this fix on your
garage door, stay tuned. There are a ton of great tips. And I think that you’ll really
enjoy this video. Let’s get to it. All right, if you already have a garage door
opener, you’re going to have to remove the old one before you put the new one in. So
let’s get on to that. Unplug the garage door opener by pulling the
plug from the outlet, and pull the light cover off that will reveal the wiring and the light
bulbs. So what you want to do – this looks like a little bomb but – you want to take
a picture of this because those wires, which run along the ceiling here, attach to different
things. The white wires connect to the sensors that
stop the door from opening and closing if somebody should go underneath it. The brown
and colored wires oftentimes connect to different switches, like this switch on the wall.
So again, either take a smartphone or a normal camera and take a picture of that wiring.
Then you can undo it using a screwdriver. As you can see here, all you need to do is
unscrew the terminals, and you can label the wires if you want to. Also, remove the light
bulb. So what you want to do next is put a box on
top of a ladder so that it supports the weight of the garage door opener because we’re
going to be unbolting the garage door opener from the support, and the last thing you need
is for it to fall on your head. Once the garage door opener is supported by
that box, you can loosen any of the nuts and bolts on the brackets using a socket wrench.
So that’s what I’m doing here. And it’s cool because what you do is you just pull
the bolts out, and the box will support the garage door opener. Disengage the emergency
release, and pull the clevis pin and the ring fastener.
Now you’re going to carefully lower the garage door opener. Carefully remove the box
from underneath the garage door opener. Lower the opener to the ladder. And then move the
ladder out of place and lower the entire garage door opener to the floor. This is really,
really simple and easy to do. So what you’ll have to do next is remove
the clevis pin and ring fastener from the bracket on the header that’s right above
your garage door. This way you’ll be able to totally disengage the entire garage door
opener unit and move it out of place, out of the way so that you’ll be able to work
on the new garage door opener. If you look online, Chamberlain garage door
openers always get good reviews, and that was a huge reason why I chose this one right
here. I chose the Chamberlain Whisper Drive because it’s a steel-reinforced belt instead
of a chain drive. And that makes garage door openers super quiet, which is exactly what
I wanted. So take the garage door opener out of the
box, put it on a towel, and set the rails to the side, too. There are five pieces to
the rail system, and there’s a window on the front rim. That’s going to be for a
pulley. I’ll explain that a little bit later. There’s also a tab that needs to face up.
So make sure that this tab is facing up when you put the rails together.
So put the rails together by hand. If you have trouble doing this, you can use a rubber
mallet to lightly tap them together. So set that aside. Put it on top of the garage door
opener. Put a box on the floor and rest the rail on top of the box. Put a screwdriver
into the hole in the rail, and double-check that the trolley here has four plastic tabs
in it because these tabs allow the trolley to move smoothly on the rail. Also make sure
that it’s oriented the correct way before you slide it onto the rail. So you can slide
the trolley onto the rail, slide it all the way down to that screwdriver. It’ll just
sit there for the time being. Put the U-bracket in place. And if you have trouble doing this,
you can use a rubber mallet to tap it onto the rail. It might also help to have the garage
door opener facing the right way. Take the ¼” bolt and lock washer/nut. Put
it into the rail, and tighten it down. This is really important. Now there are a nut and
a bolt on the top of the garage door opener itself. Loosen them using a socket wrench.
Place the U-bracket over those holes, and tighten it down to the garage door opener
using that same exact socket wrench. I want to say use the ½” drive for this. So make
sure that they’re nice and snug. Don’t over-tighten them, but make sure that they’re
nice and snug. Now you’re going to install the idler pulley.
It’s this little pulley that looks like this, and it’s got a piece of tape on top
of it. Feed the belt through that little window in the front rail. Make sure that they have
about 1’ of the belt in there. And then take the nut, the washer, and the bolt for
the idler pulley. And that idler pulley, again, should have plenty of grease in it. If it
doesn’t, you should put the grease in that little hole. Slide the bolt through, and tighten
down the washer and the nut using a socket wrench or whatever tool you have on hand.
Make sure that that’s tight enough such that the idler pulley isn’t going anywhere,
but the pulley still has some play in it like I’m showing here.
What you want to do know is that tab, you want to bend it upwards at a 90° using a
screwdriver. And if you need to, you can bend it even more using a set of pliers. Attach
the belt to the trolley like so. And then what you’ll do next is make sure that that
trolley moves smoothly but also feed the belt around the entire garage door opener, around
the pulley on the opposite end that’s actually attached to the garage door opener. Then you’ll
have this pin system that you need to put in place to connect this spring and this rod.
So take the rod out from the spring; you have to unscrew it like so. And this has an orientation
to it. There’s a flat side to it that fits into the frame of the trolley. And you want
to make sure that that’s oriented correctly before you attach this rod to the belt. So
just double-check the orientation of that rod. But again, take this pin system. Put
it all together like I’m showing you here. And make sure that that rod is nice and tight
because that’s what’s going to help pull the belt along the rail system. Tighten that
down. Re-screw the spring back in place. Make sure that it’s finger-tight so that you
have space between your finger and the belt and the rail. And just make sure the tension
is nice and good. Then what you’ll do is you’ll tighten it down even more using a
wrench. And what that’ll do is that’ll make that spring pop by ¼” and tighten
the belt exactly to the right tension. So again, you’ll put a cap over the drive on
the garage door opener. Tighten it down using the two screws that come with it, and you’re
on to the next step. Grab your level. Put it in the center of your
garage door. And make a vertical pencil mark on the header. Push the garage door up to
the highest position, then make a second horizontal mark that intersects your vertical pencil
mark. You want to try to put the bracket in the center of the door. But in this case,
my garage door, there’s a ventilation shaft running right in the center where I would
put the bracket for the actual garage door opener. So I can’t mount it in the center.
And the directions allow you to off-set it a certain amount. So follow your directions
for off-setting any kind of mounting brackets. Again just make sure that that horizontal
pencil mark intersects the center mark, or you can move it over where you want to place
the support bracket. So in this case I needed to make a second horizontal pencil mark 2”
above the first one because that’s where the bracket is going to go. Mark your pencil
marks. Drill the holes through your header. And then make sure that the bracket is facing
up like so. What you’ll do is you’ll put those lag screws into the holes by hand, then
tighten them down either using an impact driver or socket wrench.
Take your clevis pin and ring fastener; you’re going to need these. Then lean the garage
door opener up against that bracket that’s on the header. So you can see my bracket’s
a little off-set. Take the clevis pin, slide it through the bracket and through the garage
door opener, and put the ring fastener in place like I’m showing you right here. This
will allow the garage door opener to be nice and secure to the bracket.
Place the garage door opener on a ladder. And then – I got kind of lucky here – I
was able to put that same box underneath the new one and support the new garage door opener
while I repositioned the brackets on it. So I was able to use these brackets and just
slide them over to the left and to the right and then secure them using my socket wrench.
One thing I want to make perfectly clear is that these support brackets need to be screwed
into joists, not just drywall, because that’s super dangerous. And eventually, your garage
door opener will fall on top of your car or you, so I wouldn’t want that to happen.
So again, make sure that these brackets going into the ceiling are going into joists, are
being secured to joists. Slide the emergency release rope through the
trolley, and make sure that the red handle’s facing the correct way. There is a correct
way for how it should be facing, but that’s pretty simple. There should be a support bracket
on your garage door. What you want to do is make sure that your garage door is totally
down and flush with the floor. Pull down on the emergency release rope. And there are
two brackets that come with the garage door opener: a straight one and a curved one. You’re
going to install the straight bracket first into the trolley using a clevis pin and ring
fastener. It should look something like this. And it’ll just hang there while you attach
the curved arm to the bracket on your garage door. Again, you’ll just be using a clevis
pin and a ring fastener to do that. Now the straight arm can be very, very long
especially if you’ve got a set-up like mine. So I tried using a hacksaw to trim it according
to the directions; that did not work so well. So I used my oscillating multi-tool to cut
through it, and it worked awesome. So if you encounter the same thing, you may want to
use your oscillating multi-tool to cut through that straight arm.
Grab a nut, a washer, and a bolt. Actually, you’re going to need two to attach the straight
arm and the curved arm together. You can hand-tighten those and then tighten them down using a socket
wrench because this is what pulls the garage door on the rail system.
So re-engage the trolley like I did here, and put a light bulb or two into your garage
door opener. You can wire it. And the cool thing about the Chamberlain system is that
the wires just slide right into the terminals. It’s really, really simple. You’ll have
to follow the directions according to your wiring set-up, though.
Plug the garage door opener in. The light bulbs will blink three or four times. Press
the garage door opener and check and see how it runs along the track. In this case, it
was smooth, quiet, and worked out great. So that’s why I really, really like this particular
Chamberlain garage door opener. Well there you go. That’s how you do a garage
door opener installation. Yours might be a little bit different than mine because I’m
using a Chamberlain. But again, these Chamberlain garage door openers get a ton of awesome reviews,
so you may want to check one out for yourself. And if you like this video and you think it’ll
help somebody else, go ahead and click on the thumbs up button. That always helps because
not only is it helping me, but it’s helping somebody else out to watch the video and maybe
they’re going through the same DIY installation. So do that.
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So thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate your time. I hope you have a good one. I’ll
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