I have a Craftsman GDO that suddently developed the following problem. When closing the door with a remote the door will only travel a few inches and then stop (as if it struck an object) and reverse direction. I have to repeatedly press and repress the remote to coax the door all the way closed. When I shut the door with the wired button it will close all the way only if I keep the button depressed until closed. I have NO problem opening the door. I have adjusted the tracking force and distance switches and unplugged and replugged the unit to no avail. Thanks for your help. Ron Licata Weathersfield, CT

Well, rather than a repair, I just moved into our house (3 years old) and the third car opener has never worked right. It initially would go up, but not down, and didn't stop at the top, it just jammed and vibrated against the opener unit. I opened it up to find that somehow the open adjustment stop was bent and the locator just went right by it and kept trying to go up. I righted that situation by bending the stop back and setting the open travel adjustment properly. So now, it will open, and when hitting the stop, does stop. But, it will not close. I can manually close it by removing the belt from the motor and getting everything set at the bottom, then push the button and it opens again and stops properly at the top. Holding down the button does no good, and I can confirm the photo sensors are aligned properly because if I block them, the opener lights come on. It just seems to me that whatever switch exists to tell the opener it is at the top and needs to reverse direction has failed, but I have no idea what that is or how to fix it. I did find the start capacitor you guys were talking about (big blue guy, 4 wires, two red, two blue). My terminals are top and bottom, with connections on each side of it. The reds are on the bottom, and the blues on top. My opener is model 139.53954. Thanks for helping.

There are two completely separate possible problems. Problem #1 is a noisy LED (not, sound noise, but electrical noise that makes radio interference) that makes it more difficult for the radio signal from remote to base to work. Problem #2 is a capacitor on the board that wears out with age that affects the wireless capabilities. The LED bulb doesn't cause a bad capacitor or vice versa. These are cumulative issues, but unrelated in cause. So, it's slightly possible that a combination of these two issues could exist where the cumulative effects of both are enough to make it not work. But, one doesn't cause the other. Test #1 is to just temporarily remove any bulbs from the opener and see if that makes a difference in how the wireless remote works. If it does, then you probably just need a better bulb. If it doesn't, then the next most likely cause is the capacitor. For my opener, the bulbs made no difference. Mine was fixed by replacing the capacitor and is now working fine (at 25 years old).

Bad connections on circuit boards is common to all electronics and is the first thing I always look for. It is a good tip for others.