Gate motor repairs in Pierre van Ryneveld.

Layered systems and the joins between them

A property here frequently has a gate motor from one era, an intercom from another and a keypad added later, none installed by the same person.

The characteristic fault is at the joins. A keypad that no longer triggers the gate, an intercom that opens it intermittently, a remote that works while a wired trigger does not — those are wiring between systems rather than a failure inside any of them.

Finding it means testing each system independently and then testing the connections, which is slower than swapping a board and is the only way to actually locate it. On a slider, the track and the rack are dealt with under sliding gate repairs.

Long gates on generous stands

The gates here are long, which puts the emphasis on the track and the rack rather than the motor.

More track to collect grit, more rack to work loose, more travel in which a worn wheel causes trouble, and more weight for a motor that may have been specified for something shorter. Where the fault turns out to be the motor itself, that is ordinary gate motor repair work rather than anything exotic.

Where a gate has been lengthened or replaced and the motor kept, that is worth checking before it presents as a slow gate.

What a service should cover

The full run of track, cleared and inspected. Wheels checked for flats and square. Rack tightened and re-shimmed along its length.

Then the electrical side, then the joins: does the intercom trigger the gate, does the keypad, do the remotes — and does each still work after the gate has been cycled a dozen times rather than once.