Hi, I would like to remove the electric motor from a garage door in the hopes that I can use it as a manual door.

I would like to be able to pull it up and down by hand (I will most likely add a handle).

I am hoping someone may know if this is possible?

I think the motor is at one end:

And the other is just a support:

There appears to be a manual hand crank:

In the future I may replace the door with something more practical.

I have an idea how it might be possible, but I think I would need to support the door and remove the brackets. Then take it down, and pull it apart. But I have no knowledge as to how the supporting axle is connected to the motor or if it is even possible to then move it manually.

Perhaps it would be too heavy to lift manually? Or perhaps there is an easier solution?

I am open to anyone’s advice.

  • Thorry84@feddit.nlEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    In my experience this is a no-go. These things are very compact and hard to modify. The door will be pretty heavy and you need some kind of ratchet system so you can open it without supporting all the weight manually all the time. And also to prevent it from just rolling back closed again, which can be dangerous if the thing just falls and will probably break the door. It needs to be reversible, so you can close it when you want to, but be braked during the close. To do this, you will probably need to adapt some kind of chain hoist or similar. Maybe one with a mechanical advantage if the door is really heavy, it doesn’t look heavy but from a photo it’s hard to judge.

    You need to pull the thing off the wall, completely disassemble it and then modify it. Which means metal working, cutting, welding etc. On old shitty metal, so skill is required. And you need a hoist to sacrifice for the mechanism to drive it. And you need to be very sure about what you are doing, so it doesn’t fall apart or break in use. You do not want to have a door like this slamming down on someone or something, or the whole thing coming free because a weld failed.

    What is the problem you are experiencing? Replacing or repairing the electronics and/or motor is probably the easy way. Noise shouldn’t be an issue as the mechanical noise would far exceed the noise from any motor and a manual ratchet would be a lot louder.

    I was struggling with a similar situation and after repairing the old piece of shit motor for the seventh time, I replaced my roll up door with some pretty swing out doors (I had the room). They are not only insulated, but look way better and have windows in them. I actually ended up selling the old motor and got scrap metal value for the old door, but the new doors were still expensive. Still happy with them to this day.