OZZ here is a good one for you!

[Phil P]

OZZ here is a good one for you!

My electric gate opener quit working a month or so ago. I found the operator to be worn out so I ordered a new operator.

This unit seemed to work good except that on occasion it would just stop working either in the fully open or fully closed positions. Every time I tried to see what was wrong it would just go back to working.

Well Saturday morning 11/1 it wouldn’t open. I fooled with it for a bit and this time it didn’t go back to working. I shut the operator off with the off/on switch and manually opened the gate.

Yesterday afternoon I went looking and found the battery almost dead. I removed the battery and put it on charge.

This afternoon I took the freshly charge battery back to the gate.

See as how my last $25,000 refresher training was only about 4 or 5 years old I decided to trouble shoot the system and see why the battery was dead. After all even though my training was on a 400 Hz 200V 3 Phase electric I figured I could handle a little 12 v electrical problem.

I check everything, the solar panel was doing its job, and the battery checked well, check out all the wiring with a VOM all seemed good except the operator wouldn’t even give me any error codes.

I have an older unit that the seals on the screw jack had failed and let water in so I remove the control board from that unit and proceeded to check it out. I worked like it should so I go back to the gate and try it. No joy the operator just wouldn’t work. I final decided that the fully open limit switch had failed in the open position.

To get to that limit switch requires a full disassembly of the operator and the one in the old operator was water damaged so I decided to close the operator up and call the manufacturer in the morning. You work on this unit with it mounted upside down. So I put it together, decided to wire the solar panel direct to the battery and was about to remove the back hinge pin to turn the unit right side up so dew or rain water wouldn’t get in.

As I started to remove the hinge pin I notice the problem. After working on this unit for almost 2 hours I repaired it in less than 1 second. I test ran the operator and set the fully open limit program and it was working very well.

I turned the unit over and safetyed everything and used the wireless remote to close the gate on my way back to the truck.

It is amazing how well that unit works when the OFF/ON switch is in the ON position.

Phil P