Customer Reviews

Genie 4060 Excelerator 1/2-Horsepower DC Screw Drive Garage Door Opener

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This unit worked fine when it worked. Bought it from Lowes and put it together myself, it takes a fair amount of time. Its nice and quiet. We've owned it for almost 3 years now and it just died. I paid an electrician to come over ($75 just to show up) and make sure that my breakers and wiring was okay, and they were. He tested power to the unit and it was there. It just died, motor apparently. Anyway, I expected more. My parents have the old fashioned chain drive garage door opener, its loud, but its still working and they've had it for more than 25 years. Not looking forward to having to install another of these, one things for sure, it won't be a Genie.

Genie Excelerator - I now need my 3rd control circuit board in 6 years! There is a reason the parts warranty on many of their product is only 2 years!! No help from customer service, they just wanted to know if it was less than 2 years old. Circuit boards on all other products last much longer. Same failure everytime. I keep having to turn up (increase) the close or open force each time (to get it to work for a little longer) until I run out of adjustment, and then I have to order a new circuit board at $65-80. Enough, I'm changing brands.

The garage door opener in the house I just bought died after the 3rd day of owning the place. I bought the Genie Excelerator Powerlift H8000-07 as a replacement. Installation is not difficult but can be time consuming. It took me about 6 hours to install, but that included a couple of mistakes on my part that could have been avoided by paying closer attention to the directions. The only potential problem you may run into is if your old system attached to the brackets on the front of the power head instead of on the side. This means the brackets won't line up to this power head. This can easily be solved by drilling a couple new holes in the ceiling studs a littler further from the door and mounting the bracket there.

It's worked very well ever since I got it installed. It is much quieter than any other garage door opener I've used in the past. There is a slight buzz from the engine, and the moving parts of the system are even quieter than the engine. On all the previous models of garage door openers I've used, I couldn't even hear the engine because the chain or screw made so much noise.

The other nice feature of this unit is that it opens about twice as fast as most other doors, but it closes at the normal 'safe' speed. The increased speed is nice for security (getting inside your house faster), and even if you're not worried about security it's nice not having to sit in your car waiting on your door to open.

I did not buy this from Amazon. Amazon's description of this item says it has a lifetime warranty on the engine and a 5 year warranty on parts. Instead, I got it from The Home Depot. The model they have there has a lifetime warranty for the engine, parts, and home labor, and at the time of this review, it cost about the same amount, just under 240. One note, the warranty is non-transferable and Genie's definition of 'lifetime' means for as long as you own your home. Having just bought a new house, I couldn't pass up the warranty on the model at the Home Depot.

Have a DC motor garage door opener like this one (Wayne Dalton IDrive), and this is the second time it has died in 7 years. It appears all openers using this technology (DC motors), regardless of manufacturer, crap out after 3-4 years. You all helped me realize I do NOT want a Genie product as a replacement. Thank you for the saved headaches!

These review boards are a great tool to prevent poorly run companies from getting new business. A little research before buying can save you a lot of headaches. FWIW, it is pretty clear from the various reviews that I will be selecting a Chamberlain product.

I purchased a screw driven Excelerator Genie a few years ago, perhaps around 2003. It was professionally installed by the seller. The opener came with a lifetime parts and labor warranty. Within the past couple of months the electronics have had problems. The door failed to operate on two occasions temporarily, but worked OK a few hours later. Genie refused to honor the lifetime warranty because I no longer had the receipt and because the failure was intermittent. Since I need a reliable opener, I replaced it today with a belt driven Liftmaster.

Genie Excelerator 1/2-Horsepower DC Screw Drive Garage Door Opener

We had these issues in 7 years of use with this opener:

- Within a year, the door would go up a couple of feet, then stop. The 3-piece aluminum rail, which is a major weakness of this product, had been oscillating as the door rose; i.e., it would bounce up and down quite a bit. The rail just isn't strong enough. As a result, the rail sections eventually sagged where they join, and the screw drive sometimes didn't make contact due to that "bounce". The problem was solved by my making and installing mid-point bracing, which stabilized the rail.

- Opener needed periodic tinkering of the "open force" setting, as it would stop on the way up. This went on for the life of the opener. Too little or too much "force", and the door would stop going up. There was a very narrow range where it would work, and that range would change over time. Very frustrating.

- Wall console security switch locked up after 2 years and couldn't be used.

- At the 7-year mark, the carriage failed. This part is a weak mechanical link in all Genie screw drive openers, because the carriage "thread" part is either aluminum or zinc (NOT steel as it should be) and only 1/4" wide and 2 5/8" long. The entire force of lifting the garage door is on that tiny area - even more so when the carriage crosses a drive screw joint, a 1" gap with no screw threads at all.

- Finally, the door would stop after rising for a foot and no amount of adjustment would fix it. (This could have been a circuit board demise, an apparently common issue with "aging" Genie openers.) The door's torsion springs were adjusted properly.

Summary:

Most of the time it was a nice opener, but it had too many problems and ultimately died long before a well-designed opener should.

Not recommended.

I have 2 of these openers that I bought when we built our house about 7 years ago. They have always performed well, but eventually they ripped the top panel of both of my doors and bent the struts. Every garage door repair company I called said this is a common problem with this particular opener. Apparently they put too much stress on the doors when they pull them up so fast and the doors are not designed to handle the stress. Now I have to decide to either disconnect them and manually open and shut my garages or spend the $1,150 to fix both doors. Even so, they won't guarantee this won't happen again.

I purchased this opener several months back to replace a Craftsman that never quite worked correctly. The installation was quick but the door quickly devolved to its usual noisy, cranky self.

I just had a professional garage door repair man come in and he fixed the issues related to the door itself. What I found interesting is that he was very negative on Genie. He said Chamberlain, Craftsman (not to my experience) and several others were better than Genie. Genie's are 'always' being replaced - according to him. This is contrary to many of the reviews I read on Amazon but thought I'd pass it along since I am usually interest to hear the perspective of a repair man.

Based on his feedback I will now be watching this opener more closely to see how it wears. He warned me that the quick open feature is not good because it makes the door more prone to jump the track if there is an obstruction which can result in injury and / or the replacement of the entire door if it's damaged. He also said the plastic teeth holding the arm to the screw drive will wear down over time and suddenly the door will no longer be held by the arm and come slamming down. Needless to say I will no longer drive into the garage until the door is completely up and stopped (probably shouldn't regardless of brand). He said he always warns convertible drivers to be especially careful of this.

Anyway. I own it, it's installed and I spent more than the price of the opener to get the door properly balanced. I'm not sure I'd buy a Genie again based on his feedback but I also haven't owned this one long enough to see if these will actually be problems for me.

Bought a home that had a brand new Genie Excelerator. Unit worked fine until the screw that comes out the power unit and drives the door up and down broke in half.
When I called customer service, they tried everything to blame the door balance / installation / anything you can imagine. I was just trying to get a free replacement part since a screw broke in half looks more like a manufacturer defect.
They mistreated me so much and put so much roadblocks to get anything that I decided to call the Liftmaster dealer and replace the whole thing. Will NEVER buy Genie again in my life.
We've seen bad bad customer service (cable, telephone) but they probably are trained by the Genie folks.

Although this opener works well mechanically, the circuit board controlling its operation is unreliable and deteriorates over time. (See other customer reviews who have had the same experience.) After only 2.5 years of operation, we can no longer use the opener because of repeated controller failures, including violent bursts of motor activity slamming the door shut. The product is still under warranty, but the customer support is worthless.