The garage door opener had itself for dinner last night. The fix was easy but replacement parts would have been right at $100. For $30 more I got a new (well, reconditioned) Craftsman unit at our local Sears outlet store. It's a better unit than I had and even came with a remote keypad, something I'd been meaning to get for years.
FYI - Craftsman is made by Chamberlain. Also FYI, the reconditioned units come "white box". They have exactly nothing extra, including instructions (they reference a web site where you can download them). Lucky I set up a home internet account last month!
Everything went fine until I fired it up to set the limits. Something was majorly FUBAR'd. It would run and run until it timed out. I messed with it for almost two hours, alternating between trying to reset the limiters and working on the interwebz trying to see if I'd messed something up on the install. No dice.
I finally pulled the cover to see if there was something wierd going on inside. Turns out there was. This particular model, a no-frills bare-bones unit, has mechanical limiters. The main trolly that carries the limiter contacts was laying at the bottom of the unit. Hmph. I snapped it into position and everything worked as advertised.
I'm a little miffed that I had to pull the cover, and that it took an extra couple hours I wasn't planning, but it seems to be working just fine. Total cost, tax and all, $134.83. They were even nice enough to include batteries in the remotes and the doorpad. Not exactly free but it beats the crap out of the couple hundred I had running through my head when I discovered the onld unit was dead.
Brad