Can the electric eye that shoots across the bottom of the door opening be disconnected and the opener still work?

Years ago on my first house, I installed the opener myself and I believe I purposely left it off and it worked fine. In my current home, the opener is an existing LiftMaster and the eye is starting to act up. Sometimes the door keeps trying to go back up when I try to shut it. I think it's just out of alignment but I'd like to disconnect it altogether.

 

There seems to me to be a different solution to your problem. If you look at the drive "box:, you should see 4 separate adjustments. 2 adjust how far UP and DOWN the unit will drive the door. The ones you would want to try to adjust are the UP and DOWN FORCE adjustments.

After lubricating the rollers and tracks (use light oil and not grease), try increasing the down force screw about 1/16 of a turn.

If you have an Owners Manual, I am sure the instructions are inside.

Here is a link to the Liftmaster Owners Manual download site:

http://www.liftmaster.com/consumerweb/service/manuals

 

Thanks. We've lived in the house three years now and it has always operated fine. I'm aware of the down force screw and probably should oil the rollers and track.

But, I think someone hit the electric eye with their foot and knocked it out of alignment. I'd like to just totally disconnect the thing. We don't have kids so we don't need that safety device.

 

A few years ago in my old house I just used wire nuts and bypassed the thing and it worked fine. On my presnt ones that fix didn't work. - can't tell you why....

 

I just had to change out a dead one this last weekend. The new one that I installed would not work until the electric eye was hooked up. The one I replaced was 10 years old and I had to replace the eyes about 3 years ago. It was doing weird things like you describe.

 

while I don't condone it, I've found on newer ones you cannot bypass them all together but you can located them above the door and out of the way

 

I mounted my eyes on the ceiling next to the opening about 2" apart pointed at each other.

 

Great ideas crossfirefrank and johnhayes6. That's what I'll do.