The opener for Jess’s garage door had problems almost as soon as we moved in.  Despite not being that old, the Stanley opener stopped working just a few weeks after we bought the house.  When it was activiated, the light would just start blinking, instead of  opening. I was feeling quite poor at that point and didn’t want to replace the whole thing,  so after talkign to my dad and a few other knowledgeable folks, the consesnous was that the starter capacitor for the motor had gone.   Checking Ebay, I found a replacement for 8 bucks, and swapped it out.  Happily this fixed the problem and everything was fine for a year or so.

Then the door would hit the ground, and attempt to keep going, making a loud banging noise, and shaking everythign violently.  I adjusted the stops, and that fixed the problem, for awhile anyway.  A few weeks later it happened again, and after lookign a little more closely, I realized that the stops were borken, and wouldn’t hold their position.  In addition, the switch that was supposed to stop the door if the load got to high was also broken.    After futzing with it a few more times I finally decided to replace it.