Starting a New Project

[frankeeski]

With all of the talk lately from everyone trying to get maximum height from their garage door I started looking into a high lift kit. What I found is that the large majority of these kit are for 7' doors and raise the height of the door about 2'. Our garage has a little more than 10' ceilings and we currently have 8' high doors. The track kits that are available are reasonably priced but for our door I would have to have a custom one made. On top of that, their kits require new drums and cables plus a new spring. This stuff adds up quick. I had the idea that if I added a section of straight track in the middle of the 90* section of track it would keep the door away from the roller drums and cable. I only need to go up 14" and really don't need the door to go any higher in the opening. I tried a couple of the local garage door companies around here and just to order a small section of track was going to cost me $80. Online I go with CC in hand. I found a set of 7' tracks for $48 including shipping. Just the start of the latest project, I will update as I go along. I also have a really cool way of making my overhead opener operate as a side mount opener. Stay tuned.

I ordered these on Monday and they arrived this afternoon. Nice cardboard tube they came packed in.

And out of the box, ready to be cut, bolted and welded.

[frankeeski]

This is where I started today. You can see in this picture the standard rail 90* section.

And this side I have already removed the rail for some fabrication

I cut the rail midway through the 90* bend and then dressed the cut ends to ready them for welding.

My work table has 90* corners so I used this to line up the cut pieces and figured out how much of a piece I would need to achieve the height I wanted.

[frankeeski]

I welded the pieces together, keeping them flat to the table. I then dressed the welds with a grinding wheel and then a flap disc.

I took some silver paint and hit the pieces with a few quick coats to protect against rust. Since the rails were/are galvanized I stripped the coating off a good amount to get nice welds.

Here is the finished right hand side. I went ahead and added another vertical support to the rail directly to the ceiling structure, since the piece coming off next to the drum is now only attached with a single bolt. I'll trim the original rail support back to the rail later to clean it up a bit.

And now on to the finished left side. You can really see the difference in the height of the horizontal rails. It's only a difference of about a foot but it make a tremendous difference when you have a car on the lift below it.

And the finished garage door rail mod. I like that the door allows the 4 post lift to now go all the way up to the ceiling. It really gets tiring ducking under the car when working on it. The extra 12" will allow me to stand up all the way under the car.

Next on the agenda is to move the door operator from where it was in the center of the door to side mount it adapting it to turn the jack shaft of the garage door. Stay tuned.

[QSL]

great write up Frank! Looks awesome!

[David Hodgkins]

No more walking under the car with a crick in your neck. Great job Frank!

[frankeeski]

This weekends work on the garage door project. I got the existing garage opener reconfiured to mount on the side of the sectional door.

I have a bit of alignment in the mounting to fine tune the angle of the chain drive to keep it 90* of the jack shaft.

I now just need to order the jack shaft sprocket and get it installed. Then a bit of electrical for the motor head and the low voltage controls. Shouldn't be long now.

[frankeeski]

Finished! I spent some time yesterday and today running power over to the new location and moving the control wiring as well. The sprocket I purchased online needed a little bid of tweaking to fit on the jack shaft and I also ordered some chain online that would work with both the sprocket on the opener head and the new jack shaft sprocket.



Wired it all up and tested it for operation. I am very pleased with the way it all turned out. Video proof of operational status below.

[David Hodgkins]

Wow, that is very cool. VERY quiet operation! Did you have to make any changes to the bar that holds the spring? Those are mounted under tension. Was there any chance of the spring unraveling?

GREAT JOB FRANK!

[skullandbones]

I like the way you re-engineered the motor best of all! Good work all around though. Looks simple in the video but there's a lot of work put in to get that result.

Hope you get a lot of neck ache free hours under your lift.

WEK.

[frankeeski]

Did you have to make any changes to the bar that holds the spring? Those are mounted under tension. Was there any chance of the spring unraveling?

You have to be very careful when setting the limits on the opener. If it continues to turn after the door reaches bottom then the cable will "unravel". The other thing is that there is no actual lock when it is in the down position. A couple of strong guys could lift the door without the aid of the spring. I balance the spring load of any door we install so that they can be easily operated by hand when the opener is out of service. I did however give the spring another half turn since the door is now a few years old and the spring was not as tight as when it went in. Honestly, it was a lot of work to gain only a few inches of extra height but in the long run I'll be much happier and isn't that what it'a all about?

[skullandbones]

Frank,

Did you actually take the spring assembly apart or just move it while it was still together? I've heard that spring is pretty dangerous if not handled correctly (sort of like taking a coil spring out of a car - lots of potential energy!). I have to move the existing single garage door to another building and install a rollup on my garage door so I can raise the roadster into the tray ceiling while the door is still up. Can't do that as it is since the door gets in the way.

Thanks,

WEK.

WEK.

[frankeeski]

Frank,

Did you actually take the spring assembly apart or just move it while it was still together? I've heard that spring is pretty dangerous if not handled correctly.
Thanks,
WEK.

If you look at the pictures and the video closely the spring and jack-shaft assembly did not move, they stayed in the same location. With the high lift kits sold online you have to not only move the jack-shaft, you also have to replace the spring, drums and cables. The way I did it starts to move the door away from the spring, drum and jack-shaft almost immediately when the door opens. That was the biggest financial advantage with this project. I managed to do this entire project for $100. Keep in mind that if you are going to tackle a job involving the springs on one of these doors, you NEED to hire a qualified person to unload the springs. I do these quite often and have specialized tools to unload the spring so no one gets hurt. You are absolutely right that these springs store enormous energy and can easily take out your knuckle or hand in the blink of an eye.