I used to have a working garage door opener and it was awesome to be able to roll up, open the door from the car, back in, the close the door in one smooth motion. Super awesome in the rain or on winter days. It was a Sears Craftsman, a Christmas gift from my cousin and his wife.

It stopped working a long time ago, but was still hanging there on the garage ceiling, forlornly. I had some time so I thought I'd explore it a bit. I unscrewed eight bolts and took the external metal cover off. It was probably not a good sign that this cover was filled with shards of plastic.

 It really wasn't hard to figure out where the plastic came from. The main drive gear was absolutely shredded:

Oddly the worm gear on the motor drive shaft does not look damaged at all (nor anything else).

According to a plate on the side of the opener, it was manufacturered in June of 1995!

 Twenty-four years old! For something that old, I bet they don't make repair parts anymore. Wrong! They absolutely do! I found this on Sears parts online, actual OEM parts:

And $30.79...not bad! The page even had a link to a how-to video, and after watching it I was pretty convinced that i could do it. Nothing too difficult, just a bit intricate. Looking around a little bit further I found this on Amazon:

The same kit, and for only $13.66. At this price, how could I NOT try the repair??? 

Before actually ordering anything, I wanted to see if the sensors at the bottom of the door still worked. These are the things that sense if something is in the closing door path (like a small child or a dog) and stops it from closing and killing the child/dog. It seemed improbable considering that they had been down there at the bottom of the door on each side for many years accumulating dirt, crap, spider webs, rain, snow, leaves etc. etc.  There's a little green LED light on each one. It always glows on the transmit one when power is on and only glows on the receive one when it it receives the beam from the transmit one. I took off the receive one from it's mount and was able to position it aimed at the transmitter (with the opener plugged in and energized) so that both lights glowed. Damned! They actually seem to work! So I ordered the parts repair kit.

 After it arrived, I took down the opener and rail with  help and propped it up on work tables. I removed the drive chain after marking the chain and sprocket such that I could re-assemble them at the same position (you can sort of see the marks at the 9:00 position below).

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